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Skilled Healthcare Group Inc., a Foothill Ranch-based nursing home operator, said last week it’s being bought for $630 million by Onex Corp., a Toronto-based buyout company.
Boston-based investment company Heritage Partners Inc. is Skilled Healthcare’s majority owner.
Skilled Healthcare formerly was known as Fountain View Inc. The company runs 70 nursing and assisted living homes with 6,500 residents in California, Texas, Nevada and Kansas.
It has about 9,000 workers.
Healthcare “is such a huge part of the U.S. economy,” said Robert Le Blanc, Onex’s managing director, in a published report. “It is tough to ignore, as an investor.”
The sale caps a comeback from a 2001 bankruptcy filing after Skilled Healthcare, then known as Fountain View, was hit with a $6.1 million jury award in a negligence case.
A California jury ruled then that the company was negligent in its care of a 65-year-old woman who died in 1998 after surgery to remove a blood clot. It eventually settled the case for $1.1 million.
In 2003, the nursing home operator emerged from bankruptcy and changed its name to Skilled Healthcare. Heritage Partners, which owned half of the company prior to bankruptcy, ended up with 80% of the reorganized company.
Heritage Partners said in June that it hired Credit Suisse First Boston to help it explore options for Skilled Healthcare. An initial public offering was considered.
Onex has bought six healthcare companies since the beginning of 2004, including Greenwood Village, Colo.-based American Medical Response Inc., an ambulance company.
Onex is run by Gerald Schwartz, a Toronto financier, and has assets of some $11.7 billion.
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