UAE’s Abraaj Group Sells Thai Hospital Stake

UAE-based private equity investor, Abraaj Group, announced that it had sold its stake in Thai hospital Vejthani to the South East Asian healthcare chain KPJ Healthcare. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Abraaj acquired a stake in Vejthani in 2009, and has seen the general hospital grow into a multi specialist hospital, from seven specialty clinics in 2007 to 22 clinics today.

Along with the new specialties, the Thai hospital also added 80 new doctors and introduced new training and staff development programmes.

Thanks to these new initiatives, the hospital managed to see the proportion of international patients increase from 10 per cent of patients in 2007 to 45 per cent in 2011, Abraaj said in a statement.

The shift towards “higher value medical treatments” and improved business management helped to deliver a three-fold increase in profits, it added.

Omar Lodhi, partner and Asia head, Abraaj said: “The success of our investment provides further validation of our conviction that quality healthcare is one of the most exciting opportunities across growth markets.

“The emergence of a middle class across growth markets has in our view created permanent demand for quality healthcare, which in many countries cannot be fully addressed by the public sector”.

The Vejthani stake sale was Abraaj’s second healthcare investment exit in the last six months. Last year, Abraaj exited its investment in Malaysian hospital operator IHH Healthcare Berhad through a dual IPO on Bursa Malaysia and the Singapore Stock Exchange, which raised approximately $2 billion. The IPO was the third largest globally at the time of listing.

Abraaj currently has a portfolio of nine hospitals around the world, including in India, the Philippines, Kenya and Nigeria.