Hend El Sherbini borrows $60 million for IDH take-private

Riyada Managers, an investment firm focused on Egypt and North Africa and known in the market as RMBV, approved a $60 million loan to Hena Holdings to finance the buyout of Integrated Diagnostics Holdings, the Egyptian medical testing group, in a transaction that closed on Aug. 12 and valued the company at $290.7 million.

Hena Holdings is a private company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and co-owned by two women. Hend El Sherbini has been chief executive of Integrated Diagnostics since 2012. Her mother, Moamena Abdul Wahab Kamel, founded the business. Between them they are now taking private the company the older woman started and the younger one runs.

The money came as a convertible loan facility, a structure that allows the lender to turn the debt into shares later rather than fixing a valuation now. That suits a deal moving a listed company into private hands, where the equity question can be settled after the shares stop trading.

Integrated Diagnostics began as a single laboratory in Egypt in 1979. It has since expanded across the Middle East and Africa into Nigeria, Sudan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, running 628 branches, serving roughly 9 million patients and performing more than 39 million tests a year. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015 and held a secondary listing on the Egyptian Exchange between 2021 and 2024.

The buyout was not a choice. Hena already owned 49.62% of Integrated Diagnostics after paying about $63 million in June for a 21.67% stake held by Actis IDH Limited, an entity controlled by funds managed by the American activist investor Elliott Investment Management. Crossing 30% obliged Hena, under Rule 9 of the UK City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, to offer for every share it did not already hold, at no less than the highest price it had recently paid. It made that mandatory final cash offer on June 23 at 50 cents a share, the same price it gave Elliott.

Shareholders were slow to take it. No valid acceptances had been received by July 22, and by July 27 only about a tenth of a percentage point of the company had tendered. The position reversed within a day. By the afternoon of July 28, acceptances covering 6.98% of the shares had arrived, lifting Hena to 56.60% and making the offer unconditional. It closed a fortnight later.

Beyond the loan, El Sherbini and her mother committed equity of between $43 million and $150 million of their own, the range depending on how many holders accepted.

Riyada Managers has been assembling an Egyptian consumer portfolio, having taken over the supermarket chain Spinneys Egypt in a deal worth EGP 2.5 billion and moved to establish a special purpose acquisition company on the Egyptian Exchange.

The company being bought has been growing. Integrated Diagnostics reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of EGP 2.1 billion, about $41.7 million, up 31% on the same period a year earlier, driven by a 22% rise in tests performed and a 7% increase in average revenue per test. Gross profit rose 28% to EGP 807 million and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 23% to EGP 611 million, a margin of 29.5%. Pretax profit for 2025 came to EGP 2.12 billion, up 47% from EGP 1.44 billion the year before.

Matouk Bassiouny & Hennawy advised Riyada Managers, with a team led by founding partner Omar Bassiouny, who heads its corporate and mergers and acquisitions practice, supported by senior associates Omar Al Fadaly and Omar El Shabassy and associate Nourhan Sayed. Baker McKenzie acted for Hena Holdings on the credit facility through London corporate partner James Thompson, who also led on the wider acquisition alongside partners Hani Nassef, Ben Wilkinson, Tom Quincey and Lamyaa Gadelhak, senior associate Ben Saraci, and associates Avni Devgan and Natasha Hassard.