Chances are if your cat or dog required veterinary care recently, you visited a practice owned by a private equity firm and got handed a big bill. Vets are now in the crosshairs of antitrust authorities, but pet owners shouldn’t count on prices declining.
PE firms and corporate consolidators such as Mars Inc. have quietly “rolled up” individual veterinary clinics into massive international conglomerates with hundreds or even thousands of clinics. The proportion of independent UK vets, for example, shrank to around 45% in 2021 from 89% in 2013; six large chains currently control the bulk of the market.
In the ...
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