Abbey Healthcare Proposes Merger With Much Larger Boston Company

Abbey Healthcare Group Inc., one of Orange County’s largest home health-care agencies, said late Monday that it has proposed to merge with a Boston company almost three times its size.

Timothy Aitken, Abbey’s chairman, president and chief executive, told Dow Jones News Service that Abbey sent a letter on March 15 to Lifetime Corp. making a merger offer. The proposal, Aitken told Dow Jones, values Lifetime at $23.50 a share, which would make the deal worth more than $220 million.

Neither company’s officials were available for comment late Monday.

Lifetime, like Abbey, is a provider of home health-care services and products. It has annual sales of nearly $780 million and employs about 6,000 people.

Abbey, based in Costa Mesa, reported revenue of $60 million for its latest fiscal quarter. The company, based in Costa Mesa, employs about 2,260.

Abbey in late December bought back more than a million shares of its own stock, a transaction that the company said gave it a cash surplus of $25 million.

Aitken told Dow Jones that he would expect to be chief executive of the merged company, which he said would probably be based in Costa Mesa.