The $30 billion buyout of family-owned medical supplies giant Medline Industries underscores how the world’s richest families are striking massive deals with private equity giants to go global.
When the families behind some of the world’s biggest fortunes decide change is needed in their business empires, they’re increasingly turning to large private equity giants. On Saturday, Illinois-based Medline Industries, a family-owned maker of medical equipment like masks, surgical gowns, drapes, sanitizing products and biohazard bags, sold itself for about $30 billion to a consortium of private equity firms including Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman. After a hotly fought over negotiations involving other blue chip bidders, the winners have struck the largest buyout deal since the 2008 financial crisis, and one that rekindles memories of the “club deals” of the 2000s leveraged buyout boom. For the family behind Medline, the LBO will be an enormous windfall. Owned by the Mills family—Andy Mills is president, his cousin Charlie Mills is CEO and Andy’s brother-in-law Jim Abrams is COO—they will sell a majority of Medline to the private equity consortium and receive pre-tax proceeds of over $22 billion, according to Forbes estimates. Collectively, the Mills family retain just over 25% ownership in Medline, continue to run the company under existing management, and remain its largest singe shareholder. (Medline, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on our estimates.) Largely unknown until a Forbes feature a year ago, Medline’s distribution of medical supplies to hospitals across the United States was a critical part of the country’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic as it supplied hundreds of nursing homes, pharmacies and 45% of the top 150 hospital systems nationwide. Our March 2020 feature detailed Medline ramping production of cleaning supplies and sanitizers even before the government invoked Defense Production Act. Overall, business boomed for Medline in the pandemic-plagued year.
