Healthcare start-up Babylon is set to return to private ownership as part of a “restructuring and recapitalisation” of the business by its main lender AlbaCore Capital.
Senior Journalist, covering the Credit Strategy and Turnaround, Restructuring & Insolvency News brands.
Senior Journalist, covering the Credit Strategy and Turnaround, Restructuring & Insolvency News brands.
The move, designed to strengthen Babylon’s balance sheet and provide it with additional liquidity, comes after a difficult 18 months of public trading in which its shares have plummeted 99%.
As part of the deal, AlbaCore will amend the terms of its existing $300m (£239.4m) loan and provide it with an additional $34.5m (£27.5m) in interim funding, which will provide it with liquidity to support Babylon’s operations and enable it to proceed with a proposed long-term funding and take-private solution under a framework implementation agreement entered into by the two companies.
Babylon also said its core operating business will be transferred to “AlbaCore and other investors” with the sale taking place “without the approval of or any payment to” to its shareholders. This is because the investment firm will be “exercising rights under its debt agreements”.
Babylon’s board of directors has approved the interim funding deal and sees the return to private ownership as a “constructive step” in supporting its path toward profitability.