Manipal aims to become listed Indian hospital giant with Fortis purchase

By Tanvi Mehta

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Manipal Hospitals Enterprises Private Ltd plans to buy Fortis Healthcare Ltd's hospital business to create one of India's largest providers of healthcare and then go public, but the proposed terms sent shares in Fortis tumbling 7 percent.

The combined company will be 38 percent owned by Manipal Chief Executive Ranjan Pai while U.S. buyout firm TPG will hold a 20.7 percent stake. It will be the country's biggest healthcare provider by revenue, Fortis said, posing a formidable rival to Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd.

Under the deal, Fortis shareholders would get 10.83 shares in the combined company, Manipal Hospitals, for every 100 Fortis shares held, Fortis said in a statement. The total value of the transaction was not disclosed.

Fortis has 34 hospitals across India and some other countries including Sri Lanka, while Manipal has 14 hospitals in mostly southern Indian states and Malaysia. Apollo has 64 hospitals, according to its website.

The combined company is expected to seek a listing on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The deal offers an out to Fortis backers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, who resigned from its board last month following legal troubles related to the sale of their stake in drugmaker Ranbaxy to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd.

The Ranbaxy case is unrelated to Fortis.

"We continue to support the management and the board to successfully transition to the new joint entity," the Singh brothers said in a statement late Tuesday.

Manipal also plans to buy a majority stake in diagnostics chain SRL Ltd, purchasing 20 percent from Fortis for roughly 7 billion rupees ($108 million). It is talks to buy 30.9 percent from private-equity investors.

Fortis will hold 36.6 percent of SRL. Without its hospital business, Fortis will become an investment holding company, it said.

($1 = 64.9400 rupees)

(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta; Additional reporting by Sangameswaran S and Bhanu Pratap in Bengaluru and Devidutta Tripathy in Mumbai; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)