UK’s biggest private hospital provider Spire in talks on sale to private equity
The UK’s biggest private hospital provider, Spire Healthcare, is in talks about a sale to private equity that could lead to it being delisted from the London Stock Exchange.The company, which owns the Claremont hospital in Sheffield and St Anthony’s hospital in south London, said on Monday that Bridgepoint Advisers and Triton Investments Advisers were “amongst the parties” with which it was in talks.Its shares jumped 18%, making Spire the top riser on the FTSE 250 on Monday and valuing the company at nearly £850m.Spire said talks were at an early stage, adding: “There can be no certainty that any offer will be made.”It first announced a strategic review of its operations in September, saying it was in discussions with several parties to explore options including a potential sale of the business.
The private healthcare provider runs 38 hospitals and more than 50 clinics, medical centres and consulting rooms across England, Wales and Scotland,It was founded in 2007 with the acquisition and rebranding of 25 Bupa hospitals, and floated on the stock market in 2014,Spire acquired a string of other sites, and also built two new hospitals, in Manchester and Nottingham,It has come under pressure from investors, led by Harwood Capital Management, which told the Times last September that it felt Spire’s share price failed “to reflect the company’s value, most notably its unencumbered hospital portfolio worth in excess of £1,4bn, and its occupational health business”.
The board, which is chaired by the former Kingfisher boss Sir Ian Cheshire, responded by launching the review of the business.The company said in December that annual adjusted core profit would be at the bottom end of its guidance range of £270m to £285m.While more people have been paying for private treatments out of their own pockets, and there has been an increase in patients with health insurance, work it carries out on behalf of the NHS has slowed.Shire blamed budgetary restrictions at integrated care boards, which are responsible for planning, funding, and overseeing NHS services in a local area, and replaced clinical commissioning groups in England in 2022.The company said NHS volumes were a “material uncertainty” across the sector, and that the health service’s proposed annual tariff uplift for 2026-27 fell “significantly short” of the rate of inflation.
NHS work makes up about 30% of Spire’s revenue and has provided a steady income stream.The company’s chief executive, Justin Ash, has talked of an “integrated system” in which Spire and other private healthcare chains help reduce NHS waiting lists and “unlock growth” by helping return the long-term sick to work.There are growing concerns among the public and NHS staff about creeping privatisation of the health service, leading to a two-tiered system in which access to treatment is dependent on wealth.Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has defended the growing use of the private sector, while saying providers must “pull their weight” and not take resources away from the NHS.
Disposable income in 11 towns and cities has risen twice as fast as rest of UK
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Gold price tops $5,000 an ounce for first time as investors seek safe haven from Trump turmoil
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More than a quarter of Britons say they fear losing jobs to AI in next five years
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US small businesses are doing fine. Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers
Regardless of all the challenges they face, small businesses have been doing pretty well in this country across the board. Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the latest numbers.For more than 50 years, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has published a monthly report of small-business economic trends, based on a random sample of the organization’s approximately 300,000 member firms. This survey is one of the longest and most consistent of any I follow, using the same questionnaire since 1973. So where do things stand?Last year ended with a second consecutive monthly uptick in small-business optimism, with small-business owners anticipating that economic conditions would remain generally favorable going into 2026
Minnesota workers pressure employers to take action against ICE operations
Some of the US’s biggest companies are coming under increasing pressure to speak out about the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s operations in Minnesota.Workers throughout Minnesota have been pressuring their employers to act following the death of Renee Good, an unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.The killing on Saturday of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs Hospital ICU Nurse and member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), intensified those calls from labor unions against ICE.“ICE continues to make everyone less safe, and Minnesota’s Labor Movement repeats and amplifies our call for them to leave our state immediately,” said Bernie Burnham, Minnesota AFL-CIO President, in a statement. “Minnesota’s Labor Movement will continue to actively support and stand in solidarity with every worker who has been unlawfully detained
City minister accused of ignoring £2bn car finance tax loophole
The City minister, Lucy Rigby, has been accused of snubbing taxpayers after she appeared to brush off concerns about a £2bn tax loophole benefiting big banks caught up in the car loans scandal.Rigby was urged to intervene by a member of the parliamentary Treasury committee after it emerged that lenders including Barclays, Lloyds and Santander could sidestep rules designed to ensure banks pay tax on compensation linked to corporate misconduct.Rules introduced in 2015 prevent banks from deducting compensation payouts from their profits before calculating corporation tax, meaning they cannot reduce their tax bill, regardless of the financial impact of their own wrongdoing.However, the Guardian revealed last month that banks will be able to exploit a loophole when they start paying compensation to victims of the £11bn car finance scandal this year. Their motor finance divisions are registered as “non-bank entities”, even though they are part of the larger banking groups, placing them outside the scope of rules
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