Transaction volumes in Dutch healthcare and life sciences sector continuously rises in 2022

The number of transactions in the life sciences sector increased strongly in 2022 to 37 transactions, compared to approximately 20 in the last 5 years. Activity by private equity investors has also risen again. Investors as buyers, including transactions by portfolio companies, performed 83 transactions in 2022. There was also an increase in the number of international buyers: 66 of the 124 transactions in 2022 were made by international buyers, which is an increase of 40% compared to 2021. This concerns both international strategic buyers and foreign financial investors. The total number of transactions in the Dutch healthcare and life sciences industry increased again in 2022 (124 in 2022 vs. 116 in 2021). This increase seems directly related to the activity of a large number of pan-European platforms, the consolidation in life sciences and American buyers who benefited from the relatively favorable Dollar-Euro ratio.

These are the main conclusions of the annual market analysis of Deloitte, which has been investigating mergers and acquisitions in the Dutch healthcare and life sciences industry on an annual basis since 2008.

Claudia Brandenburg, Partner Healthcare Financial Advisory at Deloitte: "This high transaction activity will continue in the coming years. There are major challenges in the healthcare sector. The current challenges and turbulence will lead to the reordering of the activities of public and private parties internationally. The regulation per country will determine the speed of this reordering. In the Netherlands, the IZA provides a good starting point for this necessary transition. Investments by private parties will accelerate innovation and transformation in the sector". 

Read all the results and more background information in the executive summary of the research into mergers and acquisitions in healthcare. You can download this via the link on the right.
 

Expectations for 2023

Looking ahead to 2023, Deloitte expects that the total number of healthcare and life sciences transactions may decrease slightly, but the share of investors will increase relatively. Iris van Weel, Director Healthcare Corporate Finance: 'Investors are already quite active in the sector and have again invested in a large number of new platform companies last year. We see the sector gaining a lot of interest in the current economic uncertain times due to the strong underlying drivers of the industry. We see a growing number of (international) investors who specialize or explicitly focus on the healthcare and/or life sciences sectors, including (international) impact funds. For the traditional healthcare providers with relatively high fixed costs and a lot of staff, these will be challenging times due to skyrocketing inflation, rising personnel costs and the fees that are only partially indexed. The Integrated Care Agreement launched last year is expected to lead to fewer transactions in the short term, but to more activity in the medium term due to new combinations of public and private parties.'

About the study

Deloitte Corporate Finance has been researching developments in the merger & acquisition market in the Netherlands in the field of Healthcare and Life sciences since 2008. This in-depth market knowledge ensures that we can assist our clients like no other in realizing their ambitions within the healthcare and life sciences industry.

Are you interested in last year's research results? Download the executive summary of the 2022 research here.

More information?

For more information about the research, please contact Claudia Brandenburg or Iris van Weel via the contact information below.