Compagnie Nationale A Portefeuille takes majority stake in Equine Care Group

Compagnie Nationale à Portefeuille signed a share purchase agreement in July 2025 to acquire Equine Care Group from Bencis Capital Partners, which had backed the company for four years. CNP is the investment company of the Frère family, managing around 3 billion euros of net assets, and the founders kept their position in the business. Founded in 2021 by the veterinarians Tom Mariën and Frederik Bruyninx, Equine Care Group treats horses. It brings together equine hospitals, where surgery and intensive care are carried out, ambulatory practices whose vets travel to stables and competition venues, diagnostic laboratories, reproduction centres handling breeding and embryo transfer, and nutrition brands. It treats more than 50,000 horses a year for clients in over 70 countries, and remains led by veterinarians rather than by managers from outside the profession. The market it addresses is narrower and more specialised than small animal veterinary care, and its economics differ: a competition or breeding horse represents a substantial asset, its owners pay for diagnostics and surgery that would be uneconomic elsewhere, and the expertise required, in lameness, imaging and reproduction, is held by a small number of practitioners whose reputation draws the cases. Under Bencis the group had opened clinics and acquired practices across Europe, among them Thoroughbred Remedies Manufacturing in Ireland in 2023 and the Kildare practice EquiVET. CNP invested to continue that expansion into North America, South America, Australia and the Middle East, to build hospitals where none exist, and to fund research, training and diagnostic technology. Rothschild & Co advised Bencis and the company, with Allen & Overy Shearman and Argo as legal counsel, 8 Advisory on financial due diligence and Bain & Company on commercial matters. CNP was advised by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, with PwC on due diligence and Bain & Company on strategy.