CVC to buy health firm Capio's Spanish unit

LONDON (Reuters) - CVC has agreed to buy Spain's biggest private healthcare firm from Capio, the European hospital group owned by rival buyout firms Apax and Nordic Capital, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The sale of the Capio Sanidad unit is likely to close later this month, following regulatory approvals, and will give the unit an enterprise value of about 900 million euros (756 million pounds), one of the people said.

CVC is regaining a business it owned six years ago. In 2005 it sold the unit, then known as IDC Grupo Sanitario, to Gothenburg, Sweden-based Capio AB, then a public company, for 330 million euros. A year later Nordic and Apax took the parent company private in a $3.3 billion (2.1 billion pounds) leveraged buyout.

Apax, Capio, CVC and Nordic declined to comment.

On December 22, Spanish newspaper Expansion had said CVC was in talks to buy Capio Sanidad for 900 million euros, or about 10 times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). However the newspaper said Capio was also willing to explore other options, including a debt refinancing.

The unit operates more than 20 hospitals and healthcare centres in Spain, including Fundacion Jimenez Diaz, a university hospital in Madrid, and has grown from 12 hospitals in 2005. The sale will leave Capio with operations in Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

The euro zone debt crisis is not deterring CVC from making major investments in Spain.

In December three banking sources close to the deal said CVC was seeking 5 billion euros or more to take infrastructure operator Abertis (ABE.MC) private, after buying a 15.5 percent stake in August.

(Reporting by Quentin Webb and Simon Meads; additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid; Editing by Douwe Miedema, Greg Mahlich)