UK sells majority stake in plasma supply to US private equity firm Bain Capital UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government is under fire from Lord Owen, the country’s former health minister, for a decision to sell a majority stake of the state owned plasma supplier to US private equity firm Bain Capital. The sale, which will hand an 80 per cent stake in Plasma Resources UK to Bain, co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was derided by Owen, who had penned a letter earlier in the year to Cameron to intervene and halt the sale. According to Owen, who in the mid 1970s took steps to invest in the self-sufficiency of the UK’s blood and blood products, the selection of a private equity firm meant that it had “none of the safeguards in terms of governance of a publicly quoted company and being answerable to shareholders.” The UK, which was forced to spend tens of millions in 2002 to secure plasma from the US following an outbreak of mad cow disease, currently only uses 20 per cent of all donor collected blood at NHS hospitals.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 18:39:11 +0000
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