The brand has consistently attracted attention from buyers in the industry for offering exceptional healthcare for older people alongside service levels usually found in five-star hotels, including hydrotherapy pools, bistro cafes and restaurants, cinemas, hair and beauty salons, in-house chefs and chauffeurs. We have advised the Hadrian Group and its shareholders for 18 years on real estate and corporate matters including reorganisations and disposals.
The challenge
Having sold its Lifestyle branded division in 2015 to Bupa, the Hadrian Group spent the next four years growing the firm’s luxury Manor House branded homes in the Nort East and North Yorkshire, including the award winning Wetherby Manor and the Manor House Harrogate, named the best luxury care home in the UK. When receiving an attractive offer for the entire business, the Hadrian Group needed a structure that would see it retain its homes in Gosforth and Whickham whilst passing on custodianship of its North Yorkshire portfolio to a blue chip operator.
The solution
The disposal of Hadrian Healthcare Holdings Limited was a genuinely innovative and unique transaction that has broken new ground in the care sector. We put in place a transaction structure to enable a long hold real estate institutional investment fund to purchase the share capital of Hadrian Healthcare. The deal enabled the sellers to retain their core North-East business and head office function and allowed Anchor Hanover Group to take long-term leases of and acquire the luxury trading assets.
Assisted by complex structuring, the sellers achieved a record for price-per-bed in the care sector (£100m+ for 5 homes) and retained the Hadrian Healthcare brand, intellectual property and the original core of their trading business.
The impact
Hadrian Healthcare returned to investing in the luxury care home market in 2021, extending into Yorkshire with two new homes one in Skipton, North Yorkshire, and one in Roundhay, Leeds.
The move will create over 170 jobs across the two sites.
Muckle has advised us for many years and they’ve always been exceptionally responsive and highly technical.
This deal was incredibly complex, breaking new ground in the care sector, and we couldn’t have delivered it without the creativity, flexibility and dedication of the Muckle team and Matthew Walsh in particular, whose skillful handling of legal issues was impeccable.
Several teams at Muckle were involved – a full-service job – and we are delighted to have achieved such an excellent result for our business with the support of a truly North East law firm