The Mills family cashed out a majority stake in the family’s medical supplies firm to private equity in 2021. But the coming $50 billion IPO shows that even what they continue to hold is worth a fortune. Combined, Forbes estimates they’re worth $20 billion.
Medical-supplies giant Medline’s IPO is set to be this winter’s blockbuster–worth up to $55 billion. Documents for it also reveal for the first time the remaining stake of the Mills family, who founded the company in 1910 and ran it for generations until a few years after its sale to private equity in 2021 for $30 billion.
A new securities filing shows that the Mills family’s stake is worth $6 billion to $7 billion, by Forbes estimates based on the disclosed shareholdings of Mozart HoldCo and an expected share price of $26-to-$30 per share.
Combined with an estimated pretax stake of $22 billion from the earlier stake sale, that would give the Mills family–including Charlie Mills, the company’s former CEO; Andy Mills, his cousin and former president; and Jim Abrams, Andy’s brother-in-law and the former chief operating officer–a combined net worth of $20 billion by Forbes estimates. That makes them worth 18 times the $1.1 billion that Forbes calculated they were worth in 2014. The family set up a family office called Council Ring Capital following the 2021 sale, and the trio began stepping back from operations in 2023.
Medline did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Medline’s roots go back to 1910 when A.L. Mills–the great-grandfather of Charlie Mills–moved from small town Arkansas to Illinois. He sold handmade butcher’s aprons to workers in the city’s vast meatpacking district. After a nun who worked as a seamstress at a local hospital asked Mills if he could make and sell them hospital garments, the medical business was born. Over the subsequent decades, the company invented the first surgeon’s gown with 360-degree coverage, were among the first to commercialize the blue and green fabrics worn in the operating room to cut down on the lights’ glare, and were first to introduce the now ubiquitous pink-and-blue striped blankets for newborns.
Though Medline’s supplies–everything from baby blankets to bandages–are everywhere, the Mills family was largely unknown until Forbes profiled them in 2020 when Covid-19 was at its peak. At the time, its distribution of medical supplies to nursing homes, pharmacies and 45% of hospital systems nationwide was a critical part of the country’s pandemic response.
Then, in June 2021, the family–which had till then owned 100% of the company–sold a majority stake to a consortium of private-equity firms that included Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman, who beat out other blue-chip bidders. In October 2023, current CEO Jim Boyle took on that role, the first non-family member to hold it.
Private-equity ownership has been good for Medline. The company’s sales reached $25.5 billion in 2024, up 83% from $13.9 billion five years earlier. Meanwhile profits rebounded to $1.2 billion last year, compared with a small loss two years earlier.
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