Two major GP premises owners in England are to merge in a £1.8bn deal.
Primary Health Properties (PHP) – which owns 516 primary healthcare facilities valued at £2.8bn – and property investor and developer Assura, whose 603 buildings are worth £3.2bn with the majority being GP premises, are to merge after shareholders voted in favour of this.
The deal required acceptance by more than 50% of Assura shareholders, and they had until yesterday to accept the cash and shares offer worth £1.79bn, which would see the two combine in a real estate investment trust.
Now the companies have confirmed that 63% of Assura’s shareholders voted in favour of accepting the PHP offer.
Declaring the offer ‘wholly unconditional’, PHP said: ‘In accordance with Rule 17 of the Takeover Code, PHP is pleased to announce that as at 1.00 p.m. (London time) on 12 August 2025, PHP had received valid acceptances of the Revised Offer in respect of 2,049,296,826 Assura Shares, representing approximately 62.93% of the issued ordinary share capital of Assura.’
Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it is investigating the acquisition, considering whether the transaction ‘may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition’ within the market.
PHP must now hold off from merging the two companies until the CMA has completed its investigation and given approval.
Altrincham-based Assura, which owns more than 600 GP surgeries and private hospitals, had previously agreed to a £1.6bn takeover by Bidco, a company funded by US private equity firms KKR and Stonepeak.
In May, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced that a £100m capital funding pot previously ‘earmarked’ for 200 GP upgrades would need to stretch to over 1,000 GP practices.
In 2023, US healthcare giant UnitedHealth – which functions as Optum in the UK – bought GP IT supplier EMIS for £1.2bn after the deal was cleared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
And the same year, US medical insurance company Centene sold Operose Health – which runs nearly 60 GP practices – to HCRG Care Group.
A version of this story first appeared on our sister title Pulse.
