Munjals And Burmans Improve Their Offer For Fortis Healthcare
The Munjal and Burman families, which are competing with four other bidders for Fortis, revised their offer upwards.
The Munjal and Burman families, which are competing with three other bidders for Fortis Healthcare Ltd., have upped the ante on their offer for the country’s second-largest hospital services provider.
The two groups have made a revised offer of Rs 1,500 crore as a direct investment into the debt-ridden company, Fortis said in an exchange statement. The previous offer was made at Rs 1,250 crore.
Details of the revised offer:
- Offer to invest Rs 500 crore via the preferential issue of shares Rs 1,000 crore via warrants based on current financial position.
- The pricing of Rs 500 crore investment in equity at Rs 156 a share or as per regulatory norms, whichever is higher
- Pricing of warrant issue at Rs 161.6 per share or as per SEBI norms, whichever is higher
- The offer is valid for next five working days.
This is an offer that meets every need of the company. We will support Fortis with further monetary funding in the future. If needed, we will support any further funding requirement for Religare Health Trust.Sunil Munjal, Chairman, Hero Enterprise
Munjal said the families are willing to make the investment without any due diligence. “I’m not sure the company at this time has the ability to stand through a long diligence process,” he told BloombergQuint by phone interview.
Hero and Burman group entities are shareholders of Fortis, holding about 3 percent in the hospital operator, an earlier letter stated. The Munjals own Hero MotoCorp Ltd. while the Burman family are promoters of fast moving consumer goods firm Dabur Ltd.
The proposal comes at a time when Fortis already has two rival offers from Manipal Health Enterprise Pvt Ltd. and IHH Healthcare Bhd. for its hospitals and diagnostics businesses. It also has a non-binding offer from Chinese conglomerate Fosun International.
This at a time when founders Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh are battling allegations of siphoning funds from the hospital chain and non-bank lender Religare Enterprises Ltd., Bloomberg reported earlier. India’s fraud watchdog and stock market regulator are both investigating the company which is also under mounting debt. The brothers stepped down from the boards of the two companies earlier this year.
Meanwhile, minority shareholders of Fortis have called for the removal of four directors from its board. The Fortis board is set to meet today to review the offers on the table.