Athenahealth sold for $5.7 billion after activist fund Elliott Management pulls bid
Private equity firms Veritas and Evergreen Coast Capital agreed to buy Athenahealth, the healthcare software firm that an activist investor had previously attempted to take over, for $5.7 billion.
The former chief executive officer of the Watertown, Mass.-based company departed earlier this year amid contentious discussions with billionaire Paul Singer, whose firm, Elliott Management, later dropped its bid.
Veritas and Evergreen plan to combine athenahealth with Virence Health, which Veritas purchased from General Electric, creating a new healthcare tech firm with “an extensive provider network of customers,” the companies said in a statement.
“Operating as a private company with Veritas’s ownership and support will provide Athenahealth with increased flexibility to achieve our purpose of unleashing our collective potential to transform healthcare,” said Jeff Immelt, the former head of GE and current Athenahealth chairman.
Bob Segert, chief executive officer of Virence, will lead the new entity.
In the past, athenahealth has pushed Congress to impose additional transparency measures on insurers and healthcare providers.
The federal government has the data to “make healthcare a ‘shoppable’ patient experience—to infuse competition into healthcare markets and therefore drive costs down,” the company wrote in a 2017 blog post.
While no major healthcare legislation is likely to be passed once control of Congress is split between Democrats and Republicans in January, there are some areas of potential compromise. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, for example, recently released draft legislation to address surprise medical bills.
