Kirkland Reps GTCR in Latest Deal for Health Tech Company

The summer is shaping up to be a busy time for Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR LLC, which announced its third deal this month on Wednesday — a buyout of health care-technology company XIFIN Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

GTCR said on Wednesday it was buying San Diego-based XIFIN, a company that provides cloud-based software for health care providers to bill and collect payments and for doctors to connect with patients, with cash from its latest investment fund GTCR Fund XI.

“GTCR shares our commitment to delivering health optimization solutions and services to the diagnostic service provider market, and we will benefit immensely from GTCR's resources,” XIFIN founder and Chief Executive Lâle White, who will stay on with the firm after the closing of the transaction, said in a statement. “XIFIN remains deeply committed to the markets we serve, and in expanding our investment in our customers, technology platform solutions and employees."

The deal marks July as the busiest month of the year for GTCR, with two others already announced during the month, and shows the firm is wasting no time in putting money from its newest fund to work. And it highlights a focus on specialized technology, in this case health care tech, where deals earlier this year have focused on financial technology.

In the middle of the month, GTCR bought laboratory science company Cole-Parmer in a carveout from Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. for $480 million in cash, also from its GTCR Fund XI.

Meanwhile, on July 8, the firm said it would buy third-party management specialist Hiperos LLC for an undisclosed amount with its Opus Global Holdings LLC. That move is part of a plan to grow Opus — which it created in September alongside its chief executive, Doug Bergeron — into a global financial technology company through acquisitions.

Also this month, its deal with portfolio company Sterigenics cleared a major regulatory hurdle in its deal to buy Canadian medical isotope supplier Nordion Inc. for $805 million.

The Chicago firm has been actively snapping up assets since closing its latest fund, the GTCR Fund XI, with $3.85 billion in committed capital in January. While some private equity firms have shied away from buying, GTCR doesn’t seem to have struggled to find targets.

The three deals this month doubles its total number of transactions to six so far this year, according to announcements on the firm’s website.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP’s corporate partners Sanford Perl and Michael Weed led a team advising on the deal.

GE Capital and CapitalSource provided financing for the transaction.

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