Max India Ltd said on Friday it will acquire Warburg Pincus' stake in Max Healthcare Institute Ltd for about Rs 140 crore. The company's board of directors has approved the acquisition of the entire 16.37 per cent stake held by the Warburg Pincus group.

Max India will acquire 4,76,17,924 equity shares of Rs 10 each of Max Healthcare at Rs 29.40 a share, according to information given by the company to the Bombay Stock Exchange. The company is expected to acquire the shares by December 15 after receiving regulatory approvals. This will take Max India's equity shareholding in the institute to 91.84 per cent.

This comes just a few days after Max India Ltd allotted 2.4 crore shares, representing about 9.4 per cent stake in the company, to an arm of US-based investment bank Goldman Sachs. As many as 2,40,79,700 shares were allotted to Xenok Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of GS Capital Partners VI Fund on June 10, 2011. Share of Rs 2 each were issued at a premium of Rs 214.75 a piece, it said. This is part of the conversion of compulsorily convertible debentures issued in the past to the fund house into equity shares.

On consolidated basis, Max India had revenues of about Rs 7,900 crore in the last financial year. As much as 80 per cent of that came from the insurance business and about 10 per cent from healthcare. Max India's share price was up 0.25 per cent to Rs 177.50.

The company had recently said it will invest up to Rs 600 crore to open four new hospitals by the end of this year. This will increase the bed capacity by 1,000 beds. Max Healthcare currently has a capacity of nearly 1,000 beds. The new hospitals would be multi-speciality and would come up at Bathinda and Mohali in Punjab, Shalimar Bagh in Delhi and Dehradun in Uttarakhand. Max India at present runs six hospitals and two centres under Max Healthcare.

>tkt@thehindu.co.in

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