Some shareholders of Fortis Healthcare Ltd have come together to be in opposition to the sale of Fortis hospitals to the Manipal Health Enterprises and TPG Capital.
The investors, led by Eastbridge Capital, have talked to several other shareholders of Fortis, like Elliott Management Corp. to contest the deal.
“This section of investors, which so far collectively account for close to 30% of Fortis shareholding, plan to write to Fortis’s board seeking an extraordinary general body meeting to replace the current board and induct new members and also call for a transparent auction process of Fortis to the highest available bidder,” said one of the officials.
March 28, 2018 was the last trading day and Fortis Healthcare share price plunged 13.37%, or Rs19.05, to Rs123.40 on news of the Fortis-Manipal deal.
In an interview on March 28, Puneet Bhatia, Co-Managing partner and country head, TPG Capital, said that he expects the Fortis-Manipal deal to cross multiple hurdles. Bhatia did not elaborate on the nature of challenges the deal is likely to face.
On the same day the board of Fortis had announced the sale of its hospital assets to the Manipal-TPG combine. Apart from hospital assets, Fortis’s board also approved the sale of 20% stake in SRL Diagnostics.
As part of the proposed transaction, Manipal promoter Ranjan Pai and TPG Capital will invest Rs3,900 crore in Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. The funds will be utilised by Manipal Health to finance the acquisition of hospital assets of Fortis Healthcare and 50.9% stake in SRL—20% from Fortis Healthcare and 30.9% from investors Avigo Capital, Jacob Ballas and International Finance Corp.
