Headquartered in Rochdale, Routes is one of the North’s leading providers of specialist person-centred health and homecare services. Operating from 14 branches across the North, the business provides specialist complex care packages for people with long-term health conditions, clinically led enhanced homecare packages and end of life care, enabling people to spend their final days at home.
Routes Healthcare has built trusted, long-term relationships with local authorities and NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) since it was founded by Andrew Healing in 2005. Demand for its services has driven sustained revenue growth since inception, which subsequently attracted investment from Key Capital Partners in 2016, who were looking for a secondary private equity exit.
We were appointed by Palatine to provide debt advisory services to support their investment into the business, based on our extensive experience in the healthcare sector.
As part of a lender education process, we introduced Shawbrook Bank and a number of other lenders to the management team during the marketing stage of the sell side process and obtained first stage credit approved terms.
We continued to work with Palatine after the lender education to manage the debt advisory process and negotiate terms of the transaction. We subsequently ran a competitive process and the deal ultimately completed with Palatine providing equity finance and Shawbrook providing debt finance of an undisclosed sum. HSBC continue to provide ongoing clearing services.
Grant Thornton ran a very smooth debt process for us on the acquisition of Routes Healthcare and secured an excellent debt package for the business. Their communication with all parties involved and approach to dealing with issues that arose was excellent and resulted in an efficient process with a great outcome.
Tom Wildig Investment Director, Palatine Private Equity
