Fortis Healthcare Ltd's wholly-owned units have initiated talks with various parties to sell their stake in Singapore-listed RHT Health Trust and its trustee manager RHT Health Trust Manager Pte. Ltd.
Fortis Healthcare International Ltd and Stellant Capital Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd are in preliminary discussions for the sale, said Fortis in a stock market disclosure. No firm proposal has been received yet, it added.
Currently, Fortis Healthcare International owns 27.82% in RHT Trust and the trustee manager owns another 2.68%. The trustee-manager, in turn, is a wholly-owned unit of Stellant.
The transaction is subject to approval from Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd and regulators in India, it said.
Shares of Fortis on Tuesday were trading at Rs 135.2, down 0.18%, on the BSE.
In January, Fortis Healthcare had completed the acquisition of Indian clinics and hospitals held by RHT Health Trust after earlier missing the deadline twice.
The overall consideration paid for the transaction was around Rs 4,666 crore. 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.
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.
