Saga moves to offload Allied Healthcare arm
SAGA has appointed the investment bank Greenhill in a bid to speed up its attempt to sell off the public sector operations of Allied Healthcare.
The move to offload the homecare and healthcare provider, first reported by Sky News, comes amid the increased prospect of local authority budget cuts.
Saga, a leading travel and financial services group for customers aged over 50, has owned Allied Healthcare since August 2011 when it purchased it for £107m.
In January, Saga indicated its desire to offload the wing. In a statement it said: “The Allied Healthcare business focused on local authorities and the NHS do not fit with the Saga business model and the decision has been taken to divest this part of the business.”
With growing pressure on local authority budgets, and billions of pounds of required savings laid out in Wednesday’s Budget, and uncertainty remaining over where cuts will fall, the investment bank has been brought in to conduct an auction of the assets. Saga, a FTSE 250-listed company, has suffered a shaky time since it floated on the stock market in May 2014. Yesterday, its shares ended down 1.69 per cent at 174p.