Alliance Imaging Makes Big Move

Alliance Imaging Inc., moving quickly under a new parent company, said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy Los Angeles-based Mobile Technology Inc. for $100 million in cash and assumption of debts.

The purchase will give Alliance 180 mobile magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems nationwide, securing its rank as the nation’s largest provider of MRI services.

The Anaheim company said it would use bank financing to pay the cash portion, which it wouldn’t disclose. It said it hopes to complete the deal by the end of February. The company said it hasn’t determined how many employees, if any, will be dismissed.

Alliance had been a darling of Wall Street, praised for its ability to recover from near-disaster to become a leader in the fragmented mobile MRI industry, where it seemed every medical group owned its own machines.

But the company needed more cash than it had to make major acquisitions in the fast-consolidating field as doctors and smaller companies increasingly opted to sell out.

Looking for that extra cash, Alliance agreed last July to be acquired by Apollo Management LP, which bought 84% of the company for $264 million. Apollo is the $7-billion private buyout firm headed by Leon Black, once a top aide to junk-bond advocate Michael Milken.

Alliance, which had 90 mobile MRI units at the time, continued growing internally and through an acquisition of a 14-unit Cleveland company in November. The Mobile Technology deal would add 68 MRI diagnostic centers on wheels.