Bupa to spend $355m on Hong Kong’s clinics
BRITISH medical services group Bupa is buying Hong Kong’s largest private network of clinics for $355m (£222m) from India’s Fortis Healthcare.
The deal to buy Quality Healthcare Medical Services is expected to go through as quickly as the end of this month.
Bupa chief executive Stuart Fletcher said: “Quality HealthCare is a successful, well managed business that has a great future with Bupa. “We both share a strong and common vision of providing high quality and affordable healthcare to people in Hong Kong.”
The divestment will help Fortis to focus on its hospital and diagnostic business in India and further strengthen its balance sheet by improving its net debt to equity ratio and creating further room for growth, the company said.
Established in 1868, Quality Healthcare is the largest provider of healthcare services to corporations in Hong Kong, with a network of 50 medical centres, more than 500 affiliated clinics and more than 20 dental and physiotherapy centres.
Quality Healthcare was bought by a vehicle owned by Fortis founders Malvinder Mohan Singh and his brother Shivinder in October 2010 for about $190m. In 2011, Fortis acquired all the international operations of the family business.
JPMorgan and Religare Capital Markets acted as advisors to Fortis on this transaction. Meanwhile Bupa is taking legal advice from Slaughter and May, financial advice from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Macquarie and property advice from EC Harris and DTZ.
Bupa, which does not have shareholders, has more than 14m customers in over 190 countries and offers medical insurance, healthcare and residential care.