Moneycontrol News
Fortis Healthcare on Wednesday said it had deferred its earnings date to June 11 citing ongoing deliberations of the conclusions arising from the internal investigation.
Fortis was scheduled to report its Q4 earnings today.
"It is hereby informed that the board meeting scheduled today, to inter-alia, consider and approve the Audited Financial Results for the quarter and financial year ended March 31, 2018 stands deferred to Monday, June 11, 2018. The same is as a result of ongoing deliberations of the conclusions arising from the internal investigation," Fortis said in a statement to stock exchanges.
In early March, Fortis had appointed external legal firm Luthra & Luthra to conduct internal investigation to see if there are any breaches of accounting and corporate laws, after reports came out about erstwhile promoters taking out Rs 500 crore through questionable inter corporate deposits.
In fact, Fortis' Q2 and Q3 earnings were reported together after getting delayed several times as statutory auditor refused to sign the accounts.
Deloitte had reviewed Q2 and Q3 accounts of the company and raised several red flags. Deloitte said it wasn't able to come to a conclusion on the financial statement as it "couldn't get sufficient appropriate evidence".
The company is also under investigation for the same from Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for the same.
Fresh bidding
The Fortis board, now dominated by directors representing minority shareholders, has re-opened fresh bidding process yesterday by terminating Munjal-Burmans offer that recommended earlier for shareholder approval.
The latest bid process allows bidders to conduct a 10 day due diligence on the company giving them access to data room that consists information related to company's finances, litigation and update on pending investigation. The bidders were given a deadline till June 14 to submit binding bids.
Before the deadline for bid submission, the board wants to make public the outcome of the investigation done by Luthra and Luthra.
Shareholders were unhappy with some of board's earlier decisions that include refusing to allow due-diligence, without which discovering the true value of the company wouldn't be possible.
The earlier board also dragged its feet on disclosing the outcome of internal investigation and maintained the investigation is still underway despite close to three months of its commissioning.
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