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60 I Eastern Europe bne October 2021
The European Medical Centre was set up 32 years ago to cater to expats in Moscow, but this year it IPO'd and is now a $1bn business.
European Medical Centre, 32 years of caring for Muscovites
Ben Aris in Berlin
Any expat that has lived in Moscow for an extended period knows the European Medical Centre. Set up in 1989 before the fall of the Soviet Union by a Frenchman with Russian roots to cater to the diplomatic community,
the EMC, as it is universally known,
has been the go-to clinic to treat any ailments that beset expats in Moscow.
With over three decades on the
market, business has boomed and the EMC’s clientele has changed to add
the capital’s elite and upper middle class in recent years, as the business
is now largely Russians. The firm has expanded, opening its own hospital on Orlovsky Street just outside Moscow’s Garden Ring road and several specialist clinics that provide cradle-to-the-grave state-of-the-art treatment to any that can afford them.
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Thanks to the rise of the middle class and rapidly growing interest amongst Russians with a healthy lifestyle, private healthcare has been a booming business in recent years. While many of the
rich typically fly to foreign clinics for any major treatment – Berlin’s Charité
is a favourite destination – for more mundane services the EMC has captured the market for those want to see a doctor quickly, or regularly, or simply need to get the kids inoculated and deal with their bumps and scratches.
In July the owners finally cashed in with the first IPO in the private health care sector in ten years, floating the company with a $1bn valuation. The EMC follows MD Medical Group (MDMG), Russia’s largest private provider of women and children’s healthcare, which has been growing in leaps and bounds since it
was listed on London’s stock market in 2012. MDMG set up a chain of private hospitals in Moscow and the regions that provide gynaecology and obstetrics services, which make up just over half of its income, as well as polyclinics that mostly focus on medical services for women and children.
Another company in the health
care business that is also a potential candidate for a listing is Medsi, controlled by multi-industry investment conglomerate AFK Sistema.
“This IPO is an important and logical step in the further development of EMC, which has demonstrated progressive growth over the course of many years,” chief executive Andrey Yanovsky said
at a press conference at the Moscow Exchange on the day of its listing.