Mayne Nickless was founded in
Melbourne in 1886 by John Mayne and Enoch Nickless as a parcel delivery service. Within three months it was operating 10 horse-drawn vans, by the end of the year it had 52. Listed on the
Australian Securities Exchange in 1926, it expanded to provide freight services to all Australian capital cities and ports. It also branched into armoured car cash deliveries and international logistics. In 1975, it entered a joint venture with
Trans Australia Airlines to form
AAT Coachlines, which was sold in 1983. In 1979 it purchased cash handling company
Loomis. In July 1982, Mayne Nickless took a 50% shareholding in
Total West in partnership with
Westrail. In 1985, Mayne Nickless sold its stake in Total West to
Gascoyne Trading Company. In 1983, Mayne acquired a 50% shareholding in
Ipec. It acquired the other 50% in 1988. In 1992 Mayne Nickless took a 25% shareholding in telecommunications company
Optus, this was sold in 2001. After being found to have been part of a
price fixing cartel along with
Ansett and
TNT in the early 1990s, it disposed of its remaining transport and security interests with Interlink and Ipec being sold to the
Toll Group, Interlink Express to
La Poste and
Armaguard to
Linfox. In the 1990s, it diversified into healthcare, purchasing hospitals and later pathology and diagnostic businesses. In 2001 pharmaceutical company
Faulding Pharmaceuticals was purchased. In 2002, Mayne Nickless changed its name to Mayne Group. In November 2000, Mayne's freight operations in the United Kingdom were sold to
Geopost and its container parks and warehousing facilities in
Sydney,
Melbourne and
Brisbane were sold to
Lang Corporation. In January 2002, Mayne Nickless was rebranded as the Mayne Group. In 2003, Mayne's 53 hospitals were sold to Affinity Health, a consortium of
Citigroup,
CVC Capital Partners and
GIC Private Limited. In November 2005, the company was split into Mayne Pharma and Symbion Health. Mayne Pharma was taken over by
Hospira in 2007. Symbion Health was acquired by Primary Health Care in 2008. The same year, Primary sold off Symbion's consumer business to
Sanofi and its pharmacy business to Zuellig Group. In 2013,
EBOS Group purchased Symbion from Zuellig. ==References==