The largest retirement village operator in Western Australia is the St. Ives Group with eight big retirement villages of 2,000+ homes. It was founded in 1982 by Ray Fitzgerald and he (and Russell Halpern) started a slow sale process to the RAC (Royal Automobile Club) around 2008 to finally sell in 2103.

The RAC liked the retirement village business but really liked the aged care and home care business Fitzgerald and Halpern were expanding into.

Now it is 2015 and St Ives is the largest home care operator in W.A. and expanding into Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. But they operate just two co-located care facilities. Now they have decided to sell them to Gary Barnier’s Opal Aged Care who last year did a similar deal with Stockland Retirement’s aged care facilities.

St.Ives CEO Michael Heath looks to build their home care business: “We have the necessary scale in these areas to take advantage of the trend towards people ageing in their own homes, including the retirement village homes”.