London Dreams Turn Into a Nightmare for NMC, Finablr Brothers
London Dreams Turn Into a Nightmare for NMC, Finablr Brothers
(Bloomberg) --
Promoth Manghat, who spearheaded the London listing of Finablr Plc less than a year ago, just became the latest casualty of the widening scandal around NMC Health Plc, joining brother Prasanth who was kicked out from the struggling hospital operator last month.
The brothers, hailing from the Indian state of Kerala, were quickly propelled into the upper ranks of Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty’s business empire after relocating to the United Arab Emirates in the early 2000s. They took up CEO posts at the payment platform provider and the country’s largest health care chain just a few years later.
Prasanth was the first executive to list an Abu Dhabi-based company in London in 2012. The stock jumped almost 20-fold in the following years, with its market capitalization peaking at above $10 billion in 2018. Promoth followed his brother several years later with the FTSE listing of Finablr in May. Its market value reached a peak of about 1.5 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) in December.
Once described as “rising giants” on the UAE Exchange website, the brothers put their success down to “the fine art of corporate negotiating skills” and “their astute financial wisdom.” Their downfall has been much faster.
Prasanth was removed as director and CEO of NMC in February as the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority opened an investigation into the company. A probe of financial irregularities has since revealed potentially fraudulent activity after NMC uncovered $2.7 billion of debt hidden from its board that was used for unknown purposes.
Finablr Warns of Risks to Its Survival as CEO Steps Down
Finablr on Monday warned that it may not be able to continue operating as Promoth stepped down. In an interview with Indian media in 2017, the former CEO once said: “There will be bad days and bad moments. You should have the courage to overcome those.”
Surely, they can’t get much worse than this.
--With assistance from Shaji Mathew.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicolas Parasie in Dubai at nparasie1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Claudia Maedler
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