Yet more confusion was heaped on shareholders of Gulf healthcare company NMC Health (NMC) today after it received another amendment regarding the true ownership of the company. The shares fell 3.6% to 826p.
NMC Health is not able to independently verify the information provided in the notification and is urgently seeking clarity from founder Dr. Shetty, Khaleefa Bin Butti Omair Yousif Al Muhari and Saeed Mohamed al-Qebaisi regarding their respective shareholdings.
In today’s notification al-Qebaisi is claiming that he owns directly and indirectly through companies he controls 11.38% of NMC’s shares compared with 7.67% previously.
MISSING SHARES
There are question marks over 20.4m shares, which were thought to be controlled by Shetty through BRS International but were in fact in the hands of Al Muhari and al-Qebaisi through a legal agreement dated 31 May 2017.
The shares were subsequently transferred to First Abu Dhabi Bank and Al Salam Bank Bahrain.
In order to satisfy bank loans around 8.7m shares were sold, leaving 10.9m held by First Abu Dhabi Bank and 324,210 held by Al Salam, but today’s notification says that this has yet to be confirmed by the parties’ advisers.
There are an additional 428,571 shares currently unaccounted for, leaving the company and investors in the dark.
In a separate announcement yesterday afternoon Shetty appointed specialist investment bank Houlihan Lokey, to advise on restructuring the debts of his holding company BRS Ventures, which controls around 30 firms including payment company Finablr (FIN) and Travelex.
