Fortis Healthcare Ltd said on Wednesday it has completed the acquisition of Indian clinics and hospitals held by Singapore-listed RHT Health Trust after earlier missing the deadline twice.
The overall consideration paid for the transaction was around Rs 4,666 crore, said Fortis in a statement. Originally, in November 2017, Fortis had said it planned to purchase RHT Health’s assets for Rs 4,650 crore, including debt of Rs 1,152 crore.
With the completion of the transaction, RHT Health's subsidiaries International Hospital Ltd, Fortis Health Management Ltd, Fortis Hospotel Ltd, Escorts Hearth and Super Speciality Hospital Ltd, and Hospitalia Eastern Pvt. Ltd have become the wholly-owned units of Fortis. These subsidiaries combined own two hospitals, 12 clinics, four new clinics and one clinic under construction.
The transaction will be value accretive for the company as it would save significant clinical establishment fees, the statement said. The transaction is also expected to result in significant improvement in the company’s operating profitability and cash flows, it added.
Fortis had first missed and postponed the deadline by three months to complete the transaction in August last year. It had again missed the 31 December deadline when it had sought time till 26 March 2019 for the completion of this deal.
RHT Health had listed its units on the Singapore Exchange in 2012 after raising 510.7 million Singapore dollars ($419 million then) through an initial public offering (IPO). This was the largest IPO of a business trust sponsored by an Indian company in Singapore and the second-largest primary listing in the island city-state that year.
In July last year, Fortis had accepted a proposal from Malaysia's IHH Healthcare Berhad to inject as much as Rs 7,300 crore ($1.06 billion then) into the Indian hospital chain, making it the largest investment in the South Asian nation's healthcare sector. The Indian company chose IHH after a months-long bidding war that attracted four other suitors.
