From the August 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Throughout all that activity Ed stayed on with ReMedPar. Then, in 2005, Mark Graham was brought in to help sell the company to the next private equity holder. As Ed says, “it was time to put a little more lipstick on that pig and get it sold.”
Ultimately, it was purchased in 2007 by Berkshire Partners of Massachusetts for a 14x multiple of EBITDA.
Ed retired from ReMedPar in January 2008, but in February 2008, along with Kelley Nelson as the only employee, started a consulting company to assist ReMedPar and other entities in areas where they had little or no expertise. “We literally worked out of our homes for the first several months,” Ed recalled.
Berkshire asked Ed to interview Rob Piconi as a possible candidate to run the company. Ed liked him and Rob was hired as the president. While overseeing the business, Rob was also building up MESA in Europe as part of ReMedPar. MESA was the first pan-European independent service provider.
Aramark bought ReMedPar two years later, but did not have an interest in the international market so Rob bought MESA and suggested Ed roll his new company, Ed Sloan and Associates, into that network. Ed, and sometimes Wanda, moved to Lugano, Switzerland and traveled around Europe building the company that for a time was known as Pantheon.
Fast forward to today and Ed's company, along with six other European companies, are now part of the Althea Group, which some value at more than $1 billion.
A lot has changed over the last two decades, and although OEMs are no longer buying up refurbishers the way they had been, Ed says there are new strategies in place for dealing with third-party competition.
“The approach of the OEMs in the current market seems to be more aligned with some technology advancements with hardware but more importantly the software development designed to lock out any service provider that does not have the proper service keys and/or passwords,” he said. “If successful this action will ensure that as the equipment install base is upgraded that the manufacturer will be the only entity capable of servicing the equipment.”
It’s a challenge that Ed expects to see play out over the next few years, and something that is not unique to healthcare but will be seen in many industries where technology is serviced at a competitive price by non-manufacturers.
Philip F. Jacobus
Extra Photos of Ed.
August 07, 2019 11:32
If you type www.DOTmed.com/EdSloan it will take you to a page where you can post extra photos that you have of Ed and see the ones other people posted.
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