Updating a couple sectors’ January activity, a bit of pullback in Vertical Market values last month didn’t escape the attention of PEs, particularly in healthcare, where Riverside extended its 75-transaction healthcare investment tradition with Philly-area Greenphire. Now here’s a twist on healthcare payments: Among Greenphire’s SaaS offerings for payment processing is one that pays the patients, to reward their participation in clinical trials. That’s a switch!
We also highlight Cincinatti’s ClinGenuity, which applies AI software to medical writing, acquired by another 2014 PE bolt-on, the Synchrogenix subsidiary of PE Arsenal Capital’s Certara.
In the Consumer market last month we spotted a pair of PEs making parallel Consumer Education bolt-ons related to drivers training:
One of them, Falfurrius Capital, named for the Texas town where these guys hunt, bagged e-Learning solutions provider American Safety Council in Florida for a brace with The Online Traffic School; while New York’s CIP Capital acquired San Francisco based DriversEd.com, merging it with I Drive Safely as eDriving.
Finally, in entertainment, a firm owned by rap music mogul Jay-Z paid $56M for Sweden’s Aspiro to enter the expanding music streaming market. With his fans, fame, industry insights, and half-billion dollar net worth, Jay Z may be taking a song out of Dr.Dre’s playlist, financing higher-quality streaming to compete with Spotify and Beats.
So, Tim, to ‘rap’ up our report I propose instead of PE for Private Equity, we call Jay-Z’s firm CE: for Celebrity Equity. Back to you.
Timothy Goddard
Thank you, Elon.