Struggling Mitie offloads healthcare arm for £2

Outsourcing firm Mitie has sold its home healthcare arm for just £2, five years after it acquired it for £112 million, as it exits the homecare industry.

Apposite Capital, a private equity healthcare investor, has acquired Enara Group and Complete Care Holdings for the nominal amount. Mitie will also pay Apposite £9.45 million to fund the arm’s trading losses and write off £36.8 million in costs.

Shares in Mitie, which has issued three profit warnings in the past year and placed its healthcare division under review in November, jumped nearly 10 per cent on the back of the news.

Enara trades as MiHomecare, providing care at home for people who are ill, infirm or disabled, with its staff making around 80,000 customer visits a week. Complete Care provides at-home nursing to approximately 100 people in England and Wales. Both companies, with collectively employ about 3,000 people, posted losses for the year to March 2016.

“The divestment of Enara and Complete Care follows the previously publicly communicated decision, as set out in the group's interim announcement on 21 November 2016 to withdraw from the domiciliary healthcare market,” the company said in a statement.

“Throughout the review period and sale process, Enara and Complete Care have continued to operate in an orderly and responsible manner, prioritising high standards of patient care.”

In November Mitie’s half-year results showed a £100 million loss, compared with £45 million profit a year earlier.

The home healthcare market is struggling at the moment, tackling rising staff costs from the National Living Wage and local council spending cuts.

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