Quadrant buys Australian occupational health specialist

The investment was reported by the Australian Financial Review and has been confirmed by AVCJ. Quadrant will develop the business in partnership with husband-and-wife founders Brooke Taylor and Jeremy Keane, who will retain a minority interest.

Injury Treatment provides injury prevention programs - including functional and psychological capacity evaluation, ergonomic analysis and vocational coaching - for employers and also offers services that assist employees returning to work after injury. This allows insurance companies and employers to minimize claims costs and premiums, respectively.

Injury Treatment has 43 locations spanning New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Queensland, and worked with 4,800 employers last year, treating about 9,000 workers. Of the people the company has treated with since its inception, 95% are said to have returned to their original employer.

This is the second private equity investment in Australia's occupational health space over the past 12 months, following The Riverside Company's acquisition of IPAR Rehabilitation.

Quadrant is very active in the healthcare sector generally, successfully exiting in-vitro fertilization specialist Virtus Health via an IPO while Icon Cancer Care remains in the portfolio. In both cases, the strategy has been to make bolt-on acquisitions and help the companies achieve scale - a common theme in Australia's middle market - and Injury Treatment appears to be no different.

"We have heavily invested in policy procedures and infrastructure over the last five years and now have the systems in place that allow us to make acquisitions and get economies from those acquisitions," Keane said. "And our traditional model is transferable into corporate health and wellbeing as well as emerging markets like disability insurance, which is getting support from the federal government."

Quadrant, which typically targets companies with an enterprise value of A$100-500 million ($75-380 million), closed its eighth fund about two weeks ago at A$980 million. This is the third deal announced since then, following an agreement to buy Ardent Leisure's Goodlife Health Clubs business for A$260 million and the acquisition of auto services business WorldMark Group from Navis Capital Partners.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Healthcare
• Support services
• Buyouts
• Australia
• Quadrant Private Equity