Acquisition of Newry Private Clinic by Private Equity owned health group is no surprise.

18th October 2025

Those of us who have been monitoring the manipulation of the health care system by vested interests both inside and outside the National Health Service are unsurprised to learn that Newry Private Clinic has joined Kingsbridge Health Group. 

In 2024, a Dublin-based private equity firm Exponent, paid £300m for Kingsbridge, which operates four hospitals and 11 other clinical facilities in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Is it relevant that Kingsbridge is majority owned by a private equity firm? What is a private equity firm, and what is it doing buying up private hospitals?

Academics Nicholas O’Neill and Julien Mercille inform us that “Private equity (PE) firms raise large pools of capital from institutional investors and wealthy individuals to acquire assets that they typically hope to resell within 3–7 years for substantial returns. To maximise returns, PE firms typically push for rapid growth through asset-stripping, market consolidation, and financial engineering.” As another academic puts it, “PE financialises health care, using health care entities as a means to extract wealth for investors”. So much for quality care in the private sector.

But Private Equity doesn’t just operate in the private sector. PE firms are playing an increasing role in financing aspects of NHS provision. According to an excellent article on the NHS for Sale website, the private sector supplies over 30% of NHS mental health hospital capacity, including over half the NHS inpatient beds for children and teenagers with mental health problems, and almost all of the secure beds for adults. They note that “despite underfunding being rampant in the NHS, the whole sector is underpinned by guaranteed public funding. Private equity sees the potential to make a lot of money out of NHS healthcare.”

The Workers Party’s warned earlier this year that the Kingsbridge group was “planning to become the provider of choice” for senior managers and politicians who intend to “restructure our NHS out of existence”.