Wockhardt Hospitals to raise funds through PE
Economic Times
6 Apr, 2008, 1618 hrs IST, PTI
MUMBAI: After aborting its Initial Public Offer in February, Wockhardt Hospitals on Sunday said it is looking at raising funds through private equity.
"We are looking at raising funds through private equity. We are going through the process," Wockhardt Hospitals' CEO Vishal Bali said.
Wockhardt Hospitals was looking at raising Rs 800 crore through the IPO to repay debt and fund its expansion plans that included setting up 17 new hospitals by 2010.
But its IPO received poor response and was withdrawn. Its IPO was the second this calendar year to be withdrawn, the The first one being that of real estate player Emaar MGF.
Of the Rs 800 crore Wockhardt Hospitals had planned to raise, Rs 569 crore would have gone to expansion and the rest to repay unsecured debt, Wockhardt Hospitals MD Anil Kamath had said in January.
However, the delay in raising funds is not going to affect the expansion plans of the hospital, Bali said.
Wockhardt Hospitals plans to set up 17 new hospitals across the country by 2010 to take the total number of its healthcare facilities to 32. Of the proposed 17, 11 would be brownfield and the remaining six would be greenfield.
The new hospitals are planned in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata while the brownfield hospitals would come up in Tier II cities such as Goa, Bhopal, Bhavnagar, Nashik, Ludhiana, Jabalpur, Bhuj, Patna, Hubli and Varanasi.
