Long-term healthcare provider Manor Care Inc has agreed to Washington-based private equity firm Carlyle Group''s offer of acquisition for $6.3 billion, including debt, just less than three months after the Ohio-based Manor Care launched a strategic review.

Manor Care had revenues of $3.6 billion in 2006 and generated an estimated EBITDA $447 million in 2006.

The acquisition represents 13 times of Manor Care''s expected 2007 EBITDA of $485 million. The price values Manor Care''s shares at $67 on a fully diluted basis, a premium of 2 per cent to its Friday''s closing stock price of $65.29, and a 20-per cent premium to its close on 10 April, a day before announced having assigned a strategic review of its options to J P Morgan.

Manor Care had $815 in long-term debt as of 31 March.

Carlyle says it plans to finance the transaction with a combination of its own equity, mortgage-backed securities and other debt financing.

Operating as HCR Manor Care, the company has over 500 nursing facilities and rehabilitation centres with around 60,000 employees. Its acquisition is the latest in a string of nursing homes and health care providers changing hands in North America.

Last year, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital LLC and Merrill Lynch Private Equity took the largest hospital operator in the U.S., HCA Inc., private in a $33 million buyout that closed in November.

In May, this year, PE firms Formation Capital LLC and JER Partners grabbed Genesis HealthCare Corp, another long-term healthcare operation, with a revised bid of $1.4 billion plus interest after a month-long bidding war with Fillmore Capital Partners LLC.

In mid-June, New York-based hedge fund Millennium Partners LP demanded that McLean, Sunrise Senior Living Inc, an assisted-living facility and nursing home operator with a $2 billion market value, allow itself to be sold out or overhaul its management.

Earlier in April, Canada''s Sunrise Senior Living REIT, passed on to Ventas Inc of for C$2.26 billion ($2.1 billion), who beat Health Care Property Investors Inc to grab Sunrise.