Singapore now controls Makati Med, 14 hospitals after Metro Pacific divests
The Metro Pacific Group has confirmed that Makati Medical Center and 14 other associated hospitals around the country are now controlled by a Singapore government consortium, following the release last month of the group’s first-half financial results.
Metro Pacific’s Hong Kong-based parent, First Pacific Co., disclosed the “loss of control” in the aftermath of the P30.1-billion transaction late last year, which resulted in Metro Pacific’s reducing its stake from 60.1 percent stake to only 20 percent of Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc.
In addition to the Makati Med, the Metro Pacific Group also held majority ownership in Asian Hospital, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, De Los Santos Medical Center, and Manila Doctors Hospital, as well as five primary care clinics, three cancer centers, and two healthcare colleges.
First Pacific was silent as to the actual shareholdings structure of the Singapore group to which it had ceded control of its Philippine hospital empire.
But earlier news reports identified the foreign buyers as the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, and possibly Temasek (another Singapore government holding company), with the American investment giant KKR initiating the deal in a complicated bonds-share swap transaction.
Once the bonds are converted and GIC’s existing 14 percent stake is accounted for, the consortium will own the equivalent of 80 percent of the company’s shares, Metro Pacific’s chief financial officer David Nicol told a press briefing in October.
But Metro Pacific will retain control of the business by virtue of voting rights attached to the preferred shares it owns, Reuters quoted Nicol as saying.
A check with the website of the Metro Pacific Hospitals Holdings Inc. yesterday showed that the same management team was in still place, led by president and chief executive Augusto Palisoc Jr.
The entry of the Singaporean-KKK group will enable MPHHI to hit its new target of expanding to 30 hospitals with 5,000 beds before 2030, Palisoc said last year. MPHHI currently has 14 hospitals and, as of end-2019, 3,235 beds.
The KKR-Singapore deal was resorted to after Metro Pacific decided to postpone an initial public offering for the hospital group. As to the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Metro Pacific reported that outpatient visits ironically fell by 30 percent while inpatient admissions skidded lower by 35%, even as three of the group’s hospitals were designated for COVID-19 patients.
The same trend is apparently evident in Medical City, with the Ortigas-based hospital group having sent out pink slips to about 150 medical and non-medical staff, saying their services would no longer be needed by Sept. 25.
Medical City, which counts four hospitals and 40 clinics around the country, incidentally also has a Singaporean shareholder, the Clermont Group. Heard through the grapevine
Supreme Court Justice Marvic Leonen may be a PNoy appointee but he voted against the Lopez-controlled First Balfour for having illegally dismissed half a dozen construction workers in 2007, with the high tribunal not only ordering their reinstatement, but also the payment of their back wages plus interest.
The SC decision, released last week, was a marked contrast with the position taken by the Court of Appeals in a similar case, where the appellate justices upheld First Balfour’s termination of two dozen construction workers as project, and therefore contractual employees.