Health group chiefs lose £750m as shares slump
TWO of NMC Health’s top bosses have had £750m wiped off their fortunes this week as its shares have slumped.
The Middle East-focused private hospital operator’s stock lost another 11.1pc, or 192.5p, to close at 1536.5p last night.
It has shed around 40pc of its value – or £2.2bn – since outspoken US hedge fund Muddy Waters hit out at NMC on Tuesday, leaving it worth £3.21bn.
Muddy Waters said it has taken a short position in the group – though it declined to say what size – and took aim at the company for allegedly understating its debt and querying its relationship with its auditor, EY.
Last night NMC bit back following the Muddy Waters attack, claiming it is ‘false and misleading’. NMC said it has made all the disclosures it needs to and denied that there are any grey areas between the NMC and its auditor.
NMC’s joint executive chairman and founder, Indian pharmacist Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, is the firm’s largest shareholder with MARKET REPORT a 19.2pc stake. He has lost £423m so far this week, while third-largest shareholder Khalifa Bin Butti Al Muhairi, who owns 14.7pc and is executive vice- chairman, has lost £322m. They still own holdings worth around £620m and £470m respectively.
Elsewhere, a flurry of broker downgrades knocked FTSE 350listed firms.
Blue-chip holiday giant Tui had its rating cut from ‘buy’ to ‘hold’ by brokers at German bank Berenberg, sending its shares down 3pc, or 29.6p, to 948.2p.
They warned the firm is making a ‘strategic error’ by moving away from its core business and chasing new areas such as cruise and hotel operations, which has ‘not delivered the growth it promised’. Berenberg think it’s becoming a riskier stock, though it could benefit from payments from Boeing over the grounded 737 Max aircraft. FTSE 250-listed contractor Capita closed down 5pc, or 9.05p, to 169p, after Deutsche Bank said the group would not see much of a boost from government spending.
And pub group Wetherspoons shed 5.2pc, or 90p, to close at 1635p after HSBC cut its rating to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’.
Vodka maker Stock Spirits edged up 0.5pc, or 1p, to 199p after activist investor Western Gate urged it to pay a special dividend of €0.1219 per share.
Western Gate, which is its second largest investor with a 10pc stake, is the private family office of Portuguese businessman Luis Amaral has made a number of interventions in the company and ousted its chief executive in 2016.
Western Gate said the Eastern European group needed to return cash to ‘patient’ shareholders who have seen shares fall since it went public will need to wait several years before having cash returned to them otherwise.
London’s main stock market indexes held steady as the Bank of England kept interest rates at 0.75pc. The FTSE 100 rose 0.4pc, or 33.07 points, to 7573.82, while the FTSE 250 edged up slightly by 0.01pc, or 3.01 points, to 21666.14.
British Airways owner IAG was in the red after BA nosedived in a closely watched passenger satisfaction survey. It was rated the second-worst airline for long-haul and short-haul flights, and was slammed for food, seat comfort and value for money in the Which? poll of 6,500 passengers. IAG shares fell 0.2pc, or 1.2p, to 626p.
BA was top of the short-haul poll in 2015 and its decline comes at the end of a turbulent period for BA which has seen its first ever strikes, IT failures and data breaches.
House builder Crest Nicholson shuffled up 1pc, or 4.4p, to 425.4p after it announcing that operations chief Tom Nicholson would join the company’s board from January 1.