Swedish Altor Equity Partners takes 200 pharmacies as monopoly is broken up

The firm’s Altor Fund III has signed an agreement to purchase over 200 pharmacies, which will operate under the name Apotek Hjärtat.

Fredrik Strömholm, partner of Altor, said, “There has been a relatively poor availability to pharmacy services in Sweden and we see a strong opportunity to expand the business within Apotek Hjärtat. Our ambition is to build the leading Swedish pharmacy retail chain in terms of competence, quality of advice, product offering, and operational efficiency. This investment fits well within our long-term investment mandate.”

The Swedish parliament voted on 29 April to open up the 38-year-old pharmacy monopoly. One of the intentions is to increase availability to pharmaceuticals, improve service offering and service diversity, and to achieve lower total cost of pharmaceuticals for the benefit of the consumer and the public.

Alliance Boots, which was bought out by private equity firm KKR in 2007 for £11.1bn (€12.4bn), was reportedly in the runnings to pick up assets in the sale, but walked away from the auction empty handed.

The total value of the part sale of the Apoteket monopoly is said to be SEK5.9bn (€574.5m). 

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