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Bidding farewell to a part of your company
Metro is taking unique approach
How divestitures are playing a role in local business models
Boutros is forming a civic focus group of sorts as he plots campus overhaul
By MICHELLE PARK LAZETTE mpark@crain.com
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sk insiders to explain this M&A trend, and most of them will tell you it has to do with cash and companies minding their (core) business. A number of Northeast Ohio companies sold a piece of their business last year to another company. Some local advisers expect that number to grow in the near term, given the pipelines they’re seeing, the cash that currently is chasing deals and the way executives are focused on growing their companies’ core businesses. KeyBanc Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of Cleveland-based KeyCorp, has “more going on now than we have for several years,” in terms of corporate divestiture activity, said Paul Schneir, managing director. The story is similar for the Cleveland office of law firm Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, where attorneys are busier with divestitures than Megan L. Mehalko can remember being in recent history. “You used to see this, and you’d say, ‘OK, they’re trying to raise money to pay down debt, redo their capital structure, whatever,’” said Mehalko, who chairs the firm’s corporate and securities practice group.
By TIMOTHY MAGAW tmagaw@crain.com
It was billed as an event where MetroHealth would unveil plans for a striking overhaul of its crumbling and outdated main campus off West Boutros 25th Street in Cleveland. However, the health system’s boisterous CEO, Dr. Akram Boutros, last week didn’t unveil a single blueprint or cost estimate for the massive facelift he expects will be almost complete by 2020. Instead, Boutros, who joined the health system less than a year ago, launched what could be characterized as a countywide focus group aimed at drumming up ideas to revitalize the taxpayer-supported hospital’s dilapidated headquarters and its blighted surrounding neighborhood. The idea, Boutros said in an interview last week with Crain’s, is to transform MetroHealth into “another jewel in the necklace that is Cleveland.”
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