The acquisition marks the pan-European healthcare private equity specialist’s second cross-border corporate carve-out in less than three months. Similar deals are expected to follow.

May 22, 2019 – ARCHIMED announces the purchase of DIESSE Diagnostica Senese SpA (‘DIESSE’) by Duomodiag Sarl, a holding company backed by ARCHIMED through its MED II fund, with bank finance provided by leading Italian banks MPS Capital Services and BPER. The transaction was completed on May 13, 2019.

DIESSE is an Italian developer of innovative in vitro diagnostic (‘IVD’) systems for the diagnosis of infectious and autoimmune diseases, and hematology systems to test for inflammation. The company was founded in Siena in 1980 by a group of Tuscan research scientists and generated more than €22 million of revenues in 2018 from more than 100 countries. DIESSE employs some 150 people.

DIESSE’s business is driven by two main product lines, including the Chorus and VES-MATIC brands:

The Chorus range of instruments offers a growing menu of ELISA-based immunoassays in mono-test format for the diagnosis of infectious and autoimmune diseases. The recent development of the Chorus Autosampler has enabled automation in the pre-analytical phase.

With the VES-MATIC line of hematology systems, DIESSE has been a pioneer in providing an automated approach for the measurement of the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) with high correlation to the gold standard Westergren method.

The founders of DIESSE, including Mr. Carlo Arezzini, Mr. Francesco Cocola, Mr. Franco Meiattini, Mr. Antonio Ricci, together with their long-time partner Mr. Sergio Benocci, instilled a strong culture of innovation and quality, which helped develop DIESSE’s strong brand across key markets.

Outgoing CEO, Mr Stefano Marchese, delivered a strong financial performance in recent years, supporting revenue growth with existing products, introducing incremental product developments, and improving the financial strength of the company.

″Following the change of ownership, the company will invest to help the teams accelerate innovation and drive greater market penetration in Italy and foreign markets. In this context, a new board of directors has been appointed to introduce a team of specialists from the IVD industry with a proven ability to innovate and a solid commercial, and operational track record in Italy and international markets″ commented Loïc Kubitza, Partner at ARCHIMED.

DIESSE was acquired from its founders and from Orphée SA, the Swiss subsidiary of Warsaw listed diagnostics group PZ Cormay SA.

The purchase of DIESSE from the PZ Cormay group follows another cross-border carve out completed less than three months ago by ARCHIMED. On March 1, 2019, Clean Biologics backed by ARCHIMED through its MED II fund completed its acquisition of viral vaccines producer BE Vaccines from Biological E, the Indian vaccines group headquartered in Hyderabad. ″We will pursue other opportunties to carve out non-core assets from large industry groups″, commented Vincent Guillaumot, Partner at ARCHIMED.

Buy-side advisors:

Legal: Dentons (Pier Francesco Faggiano, Alessandro Fosco Fagotto, Ludovica Balbo di Vinadio, Tommaso Zanirato, Elena Venturini, Andrea Fiorelli, Matteo Chinaglia)
Financial, Tax, Social Due Diligence: Deloitte (Marco Bastasin, Luca Bosco, Ivana Azzollini)
Strategy Due Diligence: goetzpartners (Giovanni Calia, Michele Zanin)
Regulatory: Terrana Consulting (Benedetto Terrana)
M&A Advisory: ACXIT Capital Partners (Klaus Nestler, Alexander Bücker-Flürenbrock)
Financing: Essentia Advisory (Alberto Arrotta, Fabio Minervini

Other advisors:

DIESSE’s founders were advised by Gatti Pavesi Bianchi (Legal – Franco Barucci, Andrea Palatini) and Azimut Global Counseling (Financial – Giancarlo Maestrini, Marco Rognoni, Massimo Polidori)
Orphée SA was advised by Giovannelli e Associati (Legal – Alessandro Giovannelli, Stefano Traniello, Giulia Contestabile)
MPS Capital Services and BPER were advised by Orrick (Legal – Marina Balzano, Giulio Asquini)