Birmingham corporate finance specialist Catalyst has advised on the sale of the Iberian branch of international Midlands healthcare firm HKI, months after helping sell its Warwickshire-based UK subsidiary.

HKI’s private equity owner Inflexion had previously sold its Alcester-based UK subsidiary CHKS to Capita in February, in a deal also advised by Catalyst.

It means Inflexion has now completely exited from HKI (Healthcare Knowledge International), bringing in nearly three times its original investment.

The latest deal sees HKI subsidiaries Iasist SA and Iasist Portugal sold to global business media company UBM.

Headquartered in Barcelona, Iasist is the leading provider of benchmarking data and software to regional health authorities, hospitals and other health service providers in Spain and Portugal.

Iasist is contracted by all 17 regional authorities in Spain to collect hospital data from more than 180 hospitals and primary healthcare providers to form a proprietary database of clinical outcomes on which its products and services are based.

The firm only entered the Portuguese market in 2007, but is already one of the top providers of healthcare intelligence.

Iasist will form part of UBM’s healthcare division, CMP Medica, which is a leading international provider of information and education services to healthcare professionals and patients.

John Hartz, the managing partner at Inflexion, said: “We are pleased that during the period of our ownership, Iasist has grown from a small base, offering a limited set of products and breaking even to becoming the principal supplier of a co-ordinated suite of services to the healthcare organisations of Spain and Portugal.

“Iasist has more than doubled the number of employees and has recently been working on growth prospects into South America.

“It is now in a position to move forward into its next stage of development and we wish the team every success in the future.”

Catalyst sold HKI’s UK healthcare informatics business to Capita in February 2009 and then began the process of identifying and negotiating the sale of Iasist to potential European and US buyers.

HKI, which is based in Alcester like its UK subsidiaries, is a top European benchmarking and performance and analysis provider, and was originally acquired by Inflexion in April 2004 for an enterprise value of £13 million.

During the period of Inflexion’s ownership, revenue grew by 200 per cent while the number of employees within the company doubled organically.