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TPG and Blackstone are nearing a deal to buy medical technology group Hologic, in one of the biggest take-private deals of the year so far.

A deal could be announced as soon as early as next week, said people familiar with the matter. The private equity groups have agreed on the terms of the deal and have lined up debt financing, they added.

Hologic’s enterprise value stood at more than $16bn, including nearly $1bn in debt, as of market close on Friday, following months of takeover speculation surrounding the company best known for manufacturing breast cancer screening technology.

The Financial Times first reported in May that the pair of buyout groups had submitted an offer to the Massachusetts-based company of between $70 and $72 a share, or between $16.3bn and $16.7bn in enterprise value. That bid was rejected. Hologic shares closed up almost 2 per cent at $69.85 on Friday.

As recently as August last year, Hologic was valued near all-time highs at well in excess of $80 a share. But a combination of a drop-off in demand from breast cancer screening after the Covid-19 pandemic, a slowdown in exports to China and US government funding cuts that supported HIV testing hurt its revenues, leading its share price to tumble.

News that Hologic was nearing a deal to sell to TPG and Blackstone was reported earlier on Friday by Bloomberg.

Listed companies across the life sciences sector have faced challenges in recent months because of funding cuts from US government agencies including the National Institutes of Health and USAID carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration. Investor interest has also cooled significantly since the pandemic.

TPG and Blackstone have long been on the hunt for a target in the sector. Last year, they were in months of negotiations over a take-private deal for eyecare company Bausch + Lomb. Following the collapse of that deal they agreed to look for a new target in the sector, said people familiar with the matter.

The exact terms of the deal could not immediately be established. The people warned the timeline of the buyout could shift or a deal could collapse if it hit a last-minute snag.

With large amounts of dry powder, private equity has been putting money to work in recent months with a few big bets on listed companies, despite dealmaking in the sector proving sluggish.

Last month, a consortium made up of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners struck a $55bn deal to take video games maker Electronic Arts private, in the biggest leveraged buyout of all time.

Earlier this year, Thoma Bravo agreed a $12.3bn deal to take Dayforce private, while Sycamore Partners recently closed its deal to take Walgreens private for $23.7bn. 

TPG declined to comment. Hologic and Blackstone did not immediately respond for a comment.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) is beefing up its leadership bench, naming Jon Jones as its first-ever chief revenue officer and he’s bringing serious experience to the table. Jones has worn many hats, from startup founder to Amazon executive, where he most recently led the tech giant’s Global Startups and Venture Capital division. Before that, he served as VP of Go-to-Market, Products & Services.

Alongside the hire, CoreWeave also made it clear it’s not backing down from its $9 billion bid to acquire Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ). In an open letter to Core Scientific shareholders, the company urged a yes vote on the proposed deal and reiterated that the terms remain unchanged, even after some investor pushback earlier this month.

Core Scientific will hold a special meeting on October 30, 2025, to decide on the merger a vote that could reshape both companies’ positions in the booming AI data infrastructure market. CoreWeave shares slipped 1.1% after hours to $140.12 following the announcement.

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Standard & Poors on Friday cut France’s credit rating on expectations that its debt will rise higher than previously anticipated in the coming years, heaping pressure on Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s budget plans. 

S&P is the third rating agency to downgrade France in about a month, and comes just days after Lecornu secured a fragile government at the expense of pausing President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pensions reforms. 

Lowering France’s credit rating from AA- to A+ with a stable outlook, S&P said it expects France would succeed in hitting its 5.4 per cent budget deficit target for this year. But “in the absence of significant additional budget deficit-reducing measures, the budgetary consolidation over our forecast horizon will be slower than previously expected,” it said late on Friday night. 

With the spread between French and German bonds widening in recent weeks, the downgrade is likely to further increase France’s borrowing costs.

The agency said it expects government debt to reach 121 per cent of GDP in 2028, compared with 112 per cent of GDP at the end of last year. It expects conditions in the Eurozone’s second-largest economy to remain uncertain ahead of hotly anticipated presidential elections in 2027. 

France was plunged into political crisis when President Macron called and lost snap elections in June 2024, producing no clear majority in parliament. Lecornu is his fourth different prime minister since the vote, with his predecessors being voted out by opposition groups over disagreements on how to handle France’s ballooning public debt pile. 

Lecornu — a close ally of Macron — resigned from the post of premier and was reappointed in the space of a week, highlighting France’s deepening political instability. 

He survived his first confidence votes on Thursday thanks to an abstention of most of the centre-left Socialist party, but the result came at the cost of suspending Macron’s landmark structural reform on pensions. The freeze will cost €400mn in 2026 and €1.8bn the following year.

Ahead of the votes, Lecornu argued with opposition parties to allow his government to pass a budget to bring the deficit to below 5 per cent next year. 

He urged lawmakers to negotiate over his proposed €30bn package of tax rises and spending cuts rather than resorting to more challenges to his premiership. 

S&P said the 2027 election “casts doubt” on whether France will be able to implement fiscal consolidation measures in the medium term — or whether the country would achieve the 3 per cent of GDP budget deficit target by 2029 it had pledged to the EU. 

Reacting to the downgrade, finance minister Roland Lescure said it was “now the collective responsibility of the government and parliament to adopt a budget that meets this [5.4 per cent] target before the end of 2025”.