While the fight for Parkway had just got into the next lap among the home-grown Fortis Group and the Malaysian investment firm Khazanah, Fortis backed out of the race for Parkway Holdings in a surprise turn of events. In fact, the home-grown hospital chain will now will divest its entire holding in Parkway at S$3.95 per share to Khazanah and has said that the company will look for other opportunities from the profit it made from the deal.

However, the Chairman of Fortis Healthcare, Malvinder Singh clarified that funding was never an issue for the Group. While Singh explained the rationale behind the exit, he labelled the business deals as a total strategic decisions rather than driven by emotions and egos.

It is to be mentioned here that Fortis as a Group and its sister concerns have been on an expanding drive via acquisitions for the past many years but it is one of the rare occasions where the target company is not in the hands of the Singh brothers. Moreover, when Malvinder sold Ranbaxy close to three years ago from now, many experts questioned his decision but the judgement proved right at the end.