(Excerpt from Investments & Finance Section/Wall Street West)

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Kerlin Capital Group LLC last week put finishing details on a $60 million sale of privately held Westlake Village-based Apex Therapeutic Care Inc. to publicly held Curative Health Services Inc., a publicly held disease management company based in Minneapolis.

Independent investment banker William “Bill” Doyle, who heads L.A.-based Kerlin, and his managing director, Timothy Fahringer, represented the seller. Doyle last week hinted that the sale price was at a hefty premium, but was coy about estimating the premium in percent terms.

It's hard to measure a premium on deals involving privately held companies such as Apex, because there's no public market for the shares. Nonetheless, Doyle said the Apex transaction was “custom-fitted over the course of a year. Strategic acquisitions and mergers in the current environment can be done at an attractive premium based on combined economics.”

Curative paid $19 million in cash, $36 million in stock and $5 million in the form of an IOU for Apex, a provider of drugs and services to hemophiliacs. Apex will be joined with a division of Curative to become the third-largest purveyor of such products in the United States.

— Benjamin Mark Cole

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