Bon Secours Mercy Health close to $6 billion Surgery Partners buyout

What happened

The Financial Times (FT) reported on Sunday that Bon Secours Mercy Health is nearing a takeover of Surgery Partners valued at around $6 billion. According to the FT, the Catholic hospital system is the latest not-for-profit care provider to pursue a big acquisition. Neither company had confirmed the talks in the sources we reviewed. Surgery Partners, based in Brentwood, Tennessee, runs ambulatory surgery centers (clinics for same-day operations), surgical hospitals, physician practices and urgent care sites. Its shares were at $15.38 on October 20, giving it a stock market value of about $2.0 billion, well under the reported deal figure.

What it means

This would be the second attempt in under two years to take Surgery Partners off the stock market. In January 2025, Bain Capital, which already held a 39% stake, proposed buying the rest of the shares for $25.75 each in cash. A special committee of independent directors studied the offer, and in June 2025 the two sides said they had ended talks, with the committee concluding the company was worth more on its own as a listed business. That call has aged poorly so far: the shares have traded between $11.41 and $23.44 over the past year, well below Bain's old price.

Pressure has built since then. In March 2026, activist investor Ortelius Advisors wrote to shareholders blaming the board and management for weak results, pointing to a 67% drop in the stock over five years, and urged a sale of surgical hospitals, debt reduction and a sharper focus on surgery centers. The company has partly moved in that direction. It has since completed the sale of its two Idaho Falls hospitals to Intermountain Health, a deal that valued those facilities at about $1.15 billion and brought in $587 million of net cash, mainly earmarked for paying down debt. Net debt stood at roughly 4.4 times adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) at the end of June, a heavy load that helps explain why the reported deal value sits so far above the equity value.

The underlying business is still growing, if slowly. Second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 2.7% from a year earlier to $848.9 million, while adjusted EBITDA slipped to $125.2 million and the net loss widened to $15.0 million. After the Idaho sale, management guided to at least $489 million of adjusted EBITDA for 2026.

For Bon Secours Mercy Health, the logic is about where surgery is heading. The system says it runs 49 hospitals within a network of more than 1,200 care sites, and it has spent recent years building a network of same-day surgery centers with partner Compass Surgical Partners. Buying an established national operator would give it a far larger footprint in lower-cost outpatient procedures in one step. Bain also has a link to the board: Lloyd Dean, a Bain Capital senior advisor and former CommonSpirit Health chief, joined Surgery Partners' directors in March.

The bull case

A completed sale would give shareholders a clear exit after years of disappointing returns, and takeovers usually come at a premium to the market price. The Idaho Falls sale has already cut debt and shown buyers will pay solid multiples for these assets. A deep-pocketed nonprofit buyer focused on long-term care networks may also value the outpatient platform more highly than public investors have recently.

The bear case

The FT describes a deal that is near, not signed, and talks this late can still collapse over price, financing or regulatory review. Much of the reported $6 billion may go to lenders rather than shareholders, so the per-share benefit is uncertain. Bain previously offered $25.75 and was turned away; if a new price lands far below that, some investors may push back or feel value has been lost.