Amid the tussle between Fortis Healthcare and Malaysia’s Khazanah for control of Parkway, Morgan Stanley on Thursday bought one lakh additional shares of the Singapore-based hospital chain.
Morgan Stanley (MS) — the independent financial advisor appointed by Parkway on the $ 835 million partial offer made by Khazanah’s arm Integrated Healthcare Holdings Ltd (IHHL) — said share purchase was carried out by one of its investment arms, FrontPoint Management.
The shares have been bought at a price of SGD 3.78 per share. With this, the total number of shares held by Morgan Stanley in Parkway has gone up to 4.9 lakh shares, MS said in a filing to the Singapore Stock Exchange.
On Wednesday, the company had announced the purchase of 1.15 lakh additional shares of Parkway. It had also acquired 1.1 lakh shares of Parkway at SGD 3.84 per share last week.
According to available information, FrontPoint has bought Parkway shares at a price of SGD 3.78 per share, equal to the partial offer price of SGD 3.78 a share launched by IHHL.
Parkway, which is the biggest listed hospital chain in Asia, is now at the centre of a probable bidding war between the Singh Family-promoted Fortis Healthcare and Khazanah.
Khazanah and Fortis are the largest stakeholders in Parkway with 23.9 per cent and 25.3 per cent stake, respectively.
Khazanah wants to increase its stake in Parkway to 51.5 per cent from the present 23.9 per cent through its arm Integrated Healthcare Holdings and has launched a partial cash offer of SGD 3.78 a share, thus triggering a takeover battle with Fortis.
The Singapore Industries Council had on Wednesday asked Fortis to clarify if it would make a counter offer or not by July 30 on the offer made by IHHL.
Fortis had in March this year acquired 23.9 per cent stake in Parkway Holdings for $ 685.3 million (nearly Rs 3,100 crore) from the U.S. investment firm TPG. With the acquisition, Fortis became the largest shareholder of Parkway and wrested management control and Fortis chairman Malvinder Singh became the chairman of Parkway.
