WHO WILL win public sector projects in Eastern Europe?
The recession means that the likelihood of mass privatisation of hospitals in Poland, Hungary and Romania has increased by several factors.
But who will be the major beneficiaries? Our new report, Healthcare Opportunities in Eastern Europe: Markets and Reforms, due out on March 15 (and yes, I really do mean that) concludes that mass hospital privatisation in Eastern Europe could well become a reality.
Often this will not involve a lot of headline legislation, merely cash-strapped municipalities and regions deciding to cap liabilities by selling. Some of it will be functional privatisation (see our story on Hospinvest).
The really interesting question is which companies are most likely to benefit from this new wave? I am not going to name names here (they are in the report), but the winners are likely to be those players who have developed consultancy and other services, and who already have a relationship of trust with the public sector. Again and again, there is a pattern.
Take Finland. There, Attendo arm MedOne has done well in outsourcing care homes, precisely because it has a big recruitment arm. It already has a commercial relationship with two thirds of Finland’s municipalities. Expect a similar trend to emerge in Eastern Europe.
And I don’t think the big German operators are in a hurry to move East. This opportunity will be seized by local entrepreneurs who understand these markets.
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