The Blackstone Group has reached a deal to buy publicly traded Emdeon, a medical-billing provider, for roughly $3 billion, marking its biggest US leveraged buyout in several years, The Post has learned.
“They will announce it shortly,” a source with direct knowledge of the talks said, adding that Blackstone worked through the weekend to hammer out final details.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news last month that Blackstone was in talks to buy Emdeon. Subsequent media reports had the deal talks falling apart.
Emdeon shares yesterday closed at $14.99, down 3 cents.
For Blackstone, this is its biggest US LBO since 2009.
The firm completed a much smaller February buyout of the Polymer Group, did not execute a 2010 buyout and in December 2009 completed a similarly sized $2.7 billion LBO of Busch Entertainment.
Private equity firms put about 30 percent of the money down in an LBO and have the acquired company borrow the rest to fund the deal, so in this deal Blackstone will likely put down $1 billion representing about 6 percent of its new $17 billion fund.
Blackstone built its business with LBOs, and President Tony James said in its most recent earnings call that he felt the US economy was turning around and that he foresaw more buying opportunities.