Joseph Priel, 56, president and founder of big imaging and dialysis group Euromedic, has stepped down and left the board. Private equity investor Montagu’s Mark Keough has stepped in as interim chief executive, whilst the group looks for a permanent replacement.

Priel founded the company in 1991 with his fellow Hungarian Janos Meszaros, who remains as chairman. Keough, a former McKinsey principal, has a background running low margin, highly geared computer distribution businesses.

Euromedic spokesman Michael Leahy would not go into the reasons behind the change, beyond stating: “It was time for a change.”

Euromedic still makes nearly half its sales in east and central Europe and has big operations in Poland, Hungary and Romania and was inevitably hit by government cuts. But Leahy says that Euromedic has not fared as badly as might have been expected. “Yes, there were cuts in Hungary, the Czech Rep and Romania and much smaller cuts in Poland. Overall, every healthcare fund in the region has cut back. But the impact could have been worse.” Leahy says that same centre sales in the region were down 2% in local currencies in 2009 and are forecast to be flat in 2010. Romania ran out of money in August for imaging for three months, leaving Euromedic working only in the private sector.

Other sources say that the squeeze is getting progressively worse. The head of one operator in the region said: "Hungarian prices have been decimated and I do mean that literally. In Romania budgets were halved for labs and imaging."  States are also forcing operators to wait longer for the money with Romania recently passing a decree stating that bills will not be paid for six months. We are told operators are now also having to wait that long in Poland.

Leahy says that Portugal, Italy and Greece have been “powerhouses” and that, overall across Europe, including the Eastern region, same centre sales are still expected to be to in high single digits in 2010.

Euromedic was sold by Warburg Pincus in May 2008 for €800m to Merrill Lynch, Montagu Private Equity and Ares Life Sciences for over 12 times the then EBITDA run rate.