New Delhi, July 26: India's Fortis Healthcare said Monday it would sell its 25-percent stake in Singaporean group Parkways after losing out to a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund in a bidding war for the group.
Fortis said it would sell its stake for about 817 million dollars to Malaysia's Integrated Healthcare, a wholly owned unit of Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah, which is bidding for control of the Singaporean firm.
Parkway Holdings owns or manages a network of hospitals throughout Asia, including in Singapore, India, Malaysia, Brunei and China,
"Fortis will be divesting our strategic stake in Parkways and we have reached an agreement with Khazanah to accept their voluntary general offer," Fortis chairman Malvinder Mohan Singh told reporters.
Fortis owns 282.7 million shares and will sell them for 3.95 Singaporean dollars each. The funds raised will be used for expansion elsewhere in Asia, Singh said.
Fortis made a 2.3-billion-dollar bid earlier this month to buy all the shares it did not already own in Parkways.
The Malaysian group launched an 865-million-dollar bid for Parkway in May for 313 million shares, which would take its stake to 51.5 percent from its current level of 24.1 percent.