Healthscope Receives $1.7 Billion Worth Takeover Bid

In a recent statement, Healthscope (HSP), one of the leading Australia based healthcare service providers that owns and operates around 45 medical/surgical, rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals declared that it has received an indicative, non-binding and confidential takeover proposal from a private equity consortium. The bid worth as much as $1.74 billion, asking for $5.50 for each Healthscope share. The company was yet to come up with its view regarding the bid and also advised the investors not to react to the proposal right now. The company also stated that it will come up with new announcement in due course regarding the issue.

The identity of the consortium members involved with the bid was not announced although it is believed that Carlyle and Texas pacific Group (TPG) could be involved with it. The proposal pitched at as much as 22.2 percent premium to the last traded Healthscope stock price of $4.50. It is to be mentioned that Healthscope took initiatives to acquire Symbion through friendly takeover bids twice during 2007 but failed to come up with any positive result which later Primary Health Care purchased for as much as $2.65 billion.

Healthscope posted a $45.1 million worth of profit for the first half during last February. The company stated that it was comfortable with consensus forecasts of as much as $102 million worth of profit for the full year. Healthscope also declared that it had several projects in the pipeline. The latest one revealed on April by the company was a proposal to establish a 300-bed hospital in Coburg, Melbourne. Healthscope was facing pressure during the last year to expand its business in the aged care sector which is expected to grow with the population getting older. But later, the company declared that it dropped its plans of an acquisition in this market.