Ko Kobayashi

Ko Kobayashi is a Managing Director in Healthcare. He joined the firm in 2022.

Ko has over 16 years of experience advising public and private companies, primarily in the healthcare sector, on a broad range of strategic transactions including buy and sell-side mergers and acquisition transactions, leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, divestitures, restructurings, equity and debt capital raises and strategic board advisory assignments.

Select M&A transactions include: Sale of Life Technologies to Thermo Fisher Scientific, Sale of Life Technologies’ Mass Spectrometry Business to Danaher Corporation, Acquisition of Ion Torrent by Life Technologies, Merger of Invitrogen Corporation and Applied Biosystems Inc. to form Life Technologies, Sale of EyeCare Partners (FFL) to Partners Group, Sale of Centria Healthcare (Martis Capital and Lorient Capital) to Thomas H. Lee, Merger of BioScrip, Inc. to Option Care Enterprises (Madison Dearborn Partners), Sale of Aurora Diagnostics, LLC (Summit Partners and KRG Capital) to Sonic Healthcare, Sale of OB Hospitalist Group, Inc. (Ares) to Gryphon Investors, Sale of RHA Health Services (Safanad Capital and Formation Capital) to Blue Wolf Capital Partners, Sale of Chancelight, Inc. (Trimaran Capital) to The Halifax Group, Sale of MB2 Dental Solutions to Sentinel Capital Partners, Recapitalization of Aspen Dental Management, Inc. (American Securities) to Ares and Leonard Green Partners, Sale of Smile Brands Inc. (Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe) to Gryphon Investors, Sale of Senior Whole Health, Inc. (TA Associates) to Magellan Health, Inc., Sale of Group Health Cooperative to Kaiser Permanente, Sale of Primary Provider Management Company and its affiliates to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice to form Agilon Health, Sale of Alpha Care Medical Group to Allied Pacific IPA, affiliated entity with Apollo Medical Holdings Inc., Sale of Providence Service Corporations’ human services business to Molina Healthcare, Inc. and Sale of Dermalogica, Inc. to Unilever Plc, among others.

Select financing transactions include: Life Technologies’ $800 million senior notes offering, Crocs, Inc’s convertible preferred investment by The Blackstone Group, Entravision Communications’ $425 million Senior Secured Bank Credit Facility as well as its $400 million Senior Secured Notes Offering and $50 million Revolving Credit Facility, $966 million Senior Secured Credit Facilities in support of Prism Business Media, Inc’s (Wasserstein) acquisition of Penton Media, Inc., among others.

Prior to joining Solomon Partners, Ko was part of the Healthcare and M&A Group at Moelis & Company which he joined at its founding in Los Angeles. He began his investment banking career at UBS Investment Bank as an Associate Director in the Financial Sponsors and Leveraged Finance Group in Los Angeles.