Unilabs

Unilabs is one of the largest diagnostic services providers in Europe, and the only provider to offer both laboratory, imaging, and pathology specialties at scale.

The Apax Funds had long followed the diagnostics sector and identified Unilabs as a business with good fundamentals and untapped M&A consolidation opportunities early in 2007. By 2017, the Apax Funds’ saw significant operational improvement potential for the business and viewed Unilabs as the logical player to modernise the sector, acquiring a majority stake that year.

The Apax Funds subsequently proceeded to invest in operations, people, technology, and M&A. This included:

• Drawing on Apax’s healthcare network to appoint a new management team, which re-shaped the company, leading it to become one of the fastest-growing players in the diagnostics sector,

• Leveraging the Apax Operational Excellence Practice to transform the company’s operations, with a particular focus on digital and

• Expanding its product offering, including kick-starting Unilabs telemedicine endeavours on which the company continued to build to become the European pioneer of Digital Pathology and Digital Radiology.

During this period, Unilabs also completed over 50 add-on acquisitions, helping enhance the Company’s product offering into areas like genetics and expand its geographical footprint, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Unilabs underwent significant transformation under the Apax Funds ownership, becoming the only European player covering the full spectrum of diagnostics across laboratory, imaging and pathology services at scale. At the time of exit in 2022, it employed over 12,000 people across 15 countries.

The Apax Funds sold Unilabs to A.P. Moller Holding in 2022, in a deal which amasses to the largest ever European healthcare services transaction involving a financial purchaser.