Children's Health Defense By
The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) — one of the nation’s largest autism services providers — on Monday filed for bankruptcy, prompting some experts to speculate the company’s private equity owner couldn’t squeeze out enough profit in a COVID-19 world of lockdowns, labor shortages and other financial pressures.
CARD’s majority owner, private equity firm Blackstone, reached an agreement to sell the company back to its founder, Doreen Granpeesheh, Ph.D., for about $25 million.
Under the terms of the agreement with Granpeesheh’s company, Pantogran, CARD will continue to seek higher and better purchase offers from other buyers over the next two months. The final sale must be approved by the bankruptcy court.
Granpeesheh — a leading autism expert who founded CARD in 1990 and was its CEO until 2019 — retained a 21% minority stake after selling most of the business in 2018 to Blackstone.
At the end of 2021, under Blackstone’s majority ownership, CARD was operating 221 locations in 24 states. But by the end of last year, it had shut down or was in the process of shutting down operations in 10 states. Since January 2022, CARD closed 92 locations…
