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Deal Trends, AI, and Emerging Opportunities in Healthcare with Holly Buckley of McGuireWoods LLP 9-24-25
00:05:42
In this episode, Holly Buckley, Chair of Healthcare at McGuireWoods discusses the rise of AI and health IT, growing interest in women’s health and longevity medicine, and why efficiency and value creation are defining today’s transactions.
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business Podcast and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We talk about business, venture capital, startups, private equity and a lot more. We're thrilled today to be joined by Holly Buckley. Holly serves as the chair of the Mel Choir Woods Healthcare department and works at the intersection of business and private equity and healthcare. Just absolutely brilliant leader. We're going to talk today about as we head towards the end of the year when we look at the private equity deal market. We're really going to talk today about something we're going to talk to her about in a couple days on a virtual event on private equity. Holly, what are you seeing with the deal trends, deal environments currently, and what are you most excited about as we head into the next year?
- [00:43]
B
Thank you, Scott, and thanks as always for having me on the podcast. I think what we're seeing as we kind of heading into the Home Straight toward the end of the year, which feels kind of crazy, right, that we're heading into the end of 2025, is that we are seeing some good deal volume and I think we're seeing fewer deals still getting done than we saw a couple of years ago. But we're seeing some good volume, good value, and there's been a few megadeals. And I think we're feeling really optimistic heading into the end of the year. I think the types of deals that we're seeing are a little bit different than we were seeing a couple of years ago. I'd say there's a much stronger focus now on value, value creation, less leverage, more emphasis on efficiency, technology, cost control, and really how do investors come in and add value. I think we're seeing a lot of excitement around health, IT and AI. There's good momentum there in terms of automating workflows, AI driven analytics, payer software and things like that, and a couple of other areas that I'm really excited about that I think we're starting to see more deal volume or deal interest maybe we're kind of a step before real good deal volume are both women's health and there's a number of subsectors there. There's fertility and ivf, menopause, midlife care, diagnostics and pharmaceuticals. And then the other area that I'm, I'm actually personally just really excited about and interested in is longevity medicine and healthy aging. And we're seeing a lot of talk about this and a lot of, a lot of platforms kind of seeking the opportunity to invest here. And I think with this we're going to see a lot in subscription models, wearables. It's not just the kind of type of provider, but it's a whole spectrum of services that are offered in this space.
- [02:47]
A
Thank you very, very much. And what do you, when you look at the environment, I mean, you touch so many different types of deals. What are you most excited about? What's the most interesting to you right now that you're seeing?
- [03:00]
B
The most exciting? I mean, again, for me personally, I'm really interested in women's health and longevity. I think they're under invested areas and they're areas where a lot of good can be done. I think that they're interesting substantively and there's just a lot of excitement. I think we're not seeing the high volume there yet. It's more that we're kind of on the upswing and I think we're going to see a lot in the next few years. I think in terms of actual deals that we're doing currently, I think, and this is more of a nerdy deal lawyer thing to say rather than investor thing to say, but it's just some of the really big complicated deals that are getting done that are fun to work on and they could be more traditional in terms of the nature of the provider type. But when you're seeing consortium deals and carve out deals and just deals that are kind of fun to work on because they're high dollar and high complexity, that's fun. But in terms of actual subsector, I'd say it's more of the women's health and longevity.
- [04:02]
A
Fantastic. And with the potential cut, we've seen one cut in interest rates, potentially expecting more cuts in interest rates. How much excitement is there about potential deals going on or what are you seeing?
- [04:14]
B
You know, the interest rate thing is so interesting because I'm not sure that we saw the interest rate cut and everyone said like, hallelujah, let's go do deals now. I think that the floodgates had started to open before that kind of people realized they'd waited long enough and we had to just go. And so the rate cut felt more like an inevitable thing that was going to happen. And it didn't happen as soon as a lot of folks wanted it to. And it was more like, okay, finally that's happened. But I think that the floodgates had opened before that because everyone had grown tired of waiting and knew that we needed to get some deals done. And so I think we'll see more of that more cuts coming up in the future as long as unemployment stays appropriate. But I'm not sure that it was a big kind of moment that everyone had thought it might be.
- [05:03]
A
Thank you very, very much. But maybe it's hopefully signaling towards more and more rate cuts in a more exciting and busy deal environment, though it seems like it's picked up a great deal already.
- [05:14]
B
It has. It did. I mean, I think really it was kind of June, July. It felt like it started, and then it feels like it's going to be a nice, nicely solidly busy end to the year.
- [05:26]
A
Thank you very much, Holly. It's always great to talk to you on the Becker business and the Becker private equity podcast. It's fascinating to watch the deal environment really start to pick up and so many things going on. Let's hope that continues. Thank you for joining us.
- [05:39]
B
Thank you.