FORTIS HAS JUST ₹70 CR IN BANKS, SAYS MUNJAL

NEW DELHI: Fortis Healthcare Ltd had only ₹70 crore in the bank when the Gurgaon-based company last declared its earnings and that forced Sunil Munjal and Anand Burman to set aside the need for due diligence and invest in the company, the Delhi-based businessmen said in a joint interview on Friday.

“There is a crying need right now for the company for liquidity, support. In the last earnings call that they made to the analysts, they said they have only ₹70 crore left in the bank. That is shocking for a company like Fortis. That was one reason why we said we will do without diligence,” Munjal said.

“Second, the issues around this have become so public that there are public investigations going on. Once the investigation report comes out, one would have a reasonable amount of knowledge and information. The rest of it we are prepared to learn after this process is over,” Munjal said.

Late on May 10, the board of Fortis Healthcare approved a binding offer from Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise and Dabur chairman Anand Burman’s family office.

According to the current offer, the Hero-Burman consortium will infuse ₹800 crore through a preferential allot- ment of equity shares at ₹167 a share.

The group will put in another ₹1,000 crore through warrants at ₹176 per share.

Munjal said the track-record of former owners Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh does not worry him now.

“We actually looked into Fortis twice earlier but both times we had thought about the Daiichi overhang... we thought if we do get in and this Daiichi thing starts reigning down on us, that would not be smart and again diligence was not available at that time. That time there was a lot in the air but now it seems a lot is in the open about what the issues are,” he said.

Burman allayed concern about them not having enough expertise in healthcare.

“We (Dabur India Ltd) have been in the business of healthcare for the last 135 years. I think we bring a lot of outside knowledge to the table about how we could do things better, more efficiently than what exists today,” said Burman, whose family also runs HealthCare at Home, wherein they install intensive care units at homes.

Munjal, on the other hand, has been directly associated with operations of a familyowned hospital in Ludhiana that claims to have 1,700 beds and over 20 specialities.

The two have the support of Yes Bank Ltd’s Rana Kapoor who, with around 15% stake in Fortis, is the single largest shareholder in the healthcare company.