Albion Capital Group has exited from an investment in care homes, realising a total return of 2.5 times for its venture capital trusts.
The VCT investment manager's stake in three high-end care homes managed by Berkley Care Group was sold for an undisclosed sum to leading France's Korian, a leading care services group for elderly and fragile people.
The Berkley Care Group was founded by entrepreneur Seamus Halton and, with Albion's various tranches of investment since 2014, has helped it to grow to six modern, purpose-built facilities across the South, South West and Midlands.
Albion said the exit is in line with the evolution of Albion’s strategy for the venture capital trusts it manages, which has moved away from asset-backed investments to identify fast-growing tech-enabled businesses whose business models have a positive impact on society, particularly in the areas of healthcare and business software.
With VCT rules having changed in recent years to require all new investments be made in younger companies seeking growth capital, Albion has increasingly invested in technology-led segments of the healthcare sector, such as medtech and digital health.
Emil Gigov, a partner at Albion Capital, says: “Albion is a ‘business builder’ enabling entrepreneurs to bring their vision to reality. Over the past 25 years we have partnered with entrepreneurs across a wide variety of sectors and helped them achieve rapid growth.”
He added: “Following another successful exit, we continue to pursue our strategy of providing patient capital to fast growing companies in the technology, digital health and specialist pharma sectors.”