UK plasma supplier sold to US private equity firm Bain Capital

This all sounds a bit shady and worrying. It seems the UK Government is selling the NHS state owned Plasma supply to US private equity firm Bain Capital.

The Government was tonight accused of gambling with the UK’s blood supply by selling the state-owned NHS plasma supplier to a US private equity firm.

I don't know what the potential risks are in such a sell off, but it certainly doesn't bode well, when the blood supply we as a nation rely on is being sold to a company like Bain Capital.

After hearing of the sale Lord Owen told The Independent: “It’s hard to conceive of a worse outcome for a sale of this particularly sensitive national health asset than a private equity company with none of the safeguards in terms of governance of a publicly quoted company and being answerable to shareholders.

www.independent.co.uk... rm-bain-capital-8718029.html

If it was properly run there would be no need to sell it......to anyone.

Um... doesn't that (Bain Capital) belong to Mitt Romney?

Contrary to popular myth, legend and general propaganda in a political race... Bain Capital is just a re-hab/holding company. I don't know why the name invokes some sudden sense of dread or bad outcomes. They fail if the companies they buy fail and succeed most when those purchases take off. So.. It's probably the best to happen, really.

Unlike the NHS, a company like Bain has personal stake and interest in seeing it do well. No profit for the company? No profit for the owners. They might just have a better time of things, long term, than being run by a Government system that can care less if they succeed or not, let alone have satisfied employees or not.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Bain are concerned with profits. Lets just hope the profit incentive doesn't effect quality or contamination.

reply to post by woodwardjnr


The concept that profit motive is inherently evil is where people lose me. A company like that exists for success of it's possessions...not failures. Success does come by the business they own doing well. Why is that assumed to come by screwing others?

More to the point, given this specific example....who can ever assume the non-profit Government management of anything is positive or beneficial? Given the examples of the two choices? At least people who screw up badly enough in private business get fired. In Government, they get promoted or elected to higher office. Which side of the Atlantic we're on doesn't seem to change that much.

Wow, the missed opportunity of a great title...

"American company out for blood"

"Is Bain Capital a vampire front"

"After 280+ years, U.S. reclaims blood lost in Revolution"

Oh it could go on...

reply to post by woodwardjnr


blood? organs?
just spare parts for what is viewed as a machine, a robot*
[robot=Czeck: robota=serf labor ] en.wikipedia.org...

just another tradable commodity

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Contrary to popular myth, legend and general propaganda in a political race... Bain Capital is just a re-hab/holding company. I don't know why the name invokes some sudden sense of dread or bad outcomes. They fail if the companies they buy fail and succeed most when those purchases take off. So.. It's probably the best to happen, really.

Unlike the NHS, a company like Bain has personal stake and interest in seeing it do well. No profit for the company? No profit for the owners. They might just have a better time of things, long term, than being run by a Government system that can care less if they succeed or not, let alone have satisfied employees or not.

This page explains the suspicion:

you.38degrees.org.uk...

The UK population might just find themselves experiencing shortages as the donations being redirected to whatever country offers the highest profits rather than to the parts of the country most in need.

Typical of British spivs, taking something for free and selling it for a profit

reply to post by stormcell


Ahhh... Sounds like a structural problem to me. My regional area had a similar problem on a different scale with blood collection/donation and use. The Red Cross's policy was and for all I know still is to consider the national donations to be a national pool. So if we ran low locally, it could be after a record run on donations here. That wouldn't matter if a state 1,000 miles away was short. We'd get screwed anyway.

The area here had a solution. Local medical formed their very own blood bank and distribution center for the region. What's donated here, stays here and I imagine surplus may then be available outside. As it should be...but it took local solutions to fix the problem.