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The Fortis Healthcare Ltd (FHL) Board, which met on Thursday to deliberate upon the binding bids made by various interested parties for a stake in the company, adjourned its meeting on Thursday without deliberation and decided to re-convene the meeting on Friday.
The adjournment was “owing to the resignation” of Renuka Ramanath — a member of the external advisory committee on Wednesday, the company stated.
“Accordingly, the board at its meeting held today, decided to adjourn it to be re-convened to April 27, 2018," a submission made by FHL to the National Stock Exchange and the BSE on Thursday stated.
The board also invited Suvalaxmi Chakraborty, Ravi Rajagopalachari and Indrajit Banerjee, to join immediately as additional independent directors and attend the meeting subject to their acceptance of the offer.
The Fortis board, in its last meeting on April 19, had set up an external advisory committee chaired by Deepak Kapoor, former Chairman & CEO, PwC India, to evaluate the binding bids and give its recommendation to the Fortis board by April 26.
However, one of the members of the committee, Renuka Ramnath, submitted her resignation on Wednesday, “due to her pre-occupation”.
Four companies have so far made binding bids for FHL’s hospital business. Manipal Health Enterprises Private Ltd (MHEPL), backed by TPG, is one of the front-runners with its revised proposal offering a premium of ₹ 1,319 crore to the FHL shareholders over and above FHL Hospital Business’s equity valuation of ₹5,003 crore. A close contender is the Munjal-Burman duo which not only sweetened its initial offer but also extended the validity of its bid until May 4 to stay in the race.
Malaysia’s IHH Healthcare Berhad also revised its proposal early this week, by making it a binding one given the fact that the Fortis Board had decided to consider only the binding proposals.
KKR-backed Radiant Life Care also made a revised bid for Fortis Healthcare Ltd (FHL) with a binding offer to acquire its Mulund hospital for an enterprise value of ₹1,200 crore.
The fifth bidder is China’s healthcare company Fosun Health Holdings Ltd, which made a non-binding offer. The company has offered to provide ₹ 100 crore ($15 million) in the next 45 days to support the immediate cash needs of Fortis and invest up to $350 million in total.
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