FORTIS Healthcare may have lost the battle to keep Parkway Holdings. But the Indian firm managed to make a profit of $116.7 million when it decided to accept an offer from Malaysian state investor Khazanah for Parkway.

After Fortis chairman Malvinder Singh made the announcement on July 26 in Delhi that his company has accepted the offer to sell its 25 per cent stake in Parkway to Khazanah, one investment banker told the Business Standard: "Singh is king. Wait and watch for the next headline deal from them."

He was referring to Mr Singh and his brother Shivender's gains from the Parkway stake and their desire to expand in the field of healthcare.

The Fortis chairman had made Singapore his base and he is not planning to give up, which he made clear to the media in Delhi.

"We will continue to look at other substantial growth opportunities within India, Asia and also at the global level. Since we made our investment in Parkway, we have been offered tremendous opportunities for partnerships and alliances in the region.

"We will certainly continue to explore these opportunities.

Singapore will continue to be our hub for international expansion. We are also looking at listing Fortis in Singapore so that we have another listing in Asia, which is a strong emerging market," he said.

Fortis acquired a 23.9 per cent stake in Parkway from investment firm TPG Capital at $3.56 per share in March and additional shares from the market at $3.22 a piece. Its total investment in Parkway came to around $3.54 per share.

Despite losing Parkway, Fortis commands a lot of respect, even among its rivals.

Chairman of the Apollo Hospitals Group Prathap Reddy told CNBC that he does not think selling the Parkway stake is a loss for Fortis "because healthcare has a tremendous bandwidth both within the country and the Association of South-east Asian Nations region, there is so much need, so whatever they are doing they could still play equal or bigger role."

Khazanah holds a 13 per cent stake in Apollo Hospitals and also has board-level representation.

The investment in Parkway by the Singh family came after Fortis bought 10 hospitals from Wockhardt in India for US$180 million and that came about after the brothers sold their 34.8 per cent stake in the pharmaceuticals major Ranbaxy to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo for US$2.4 billion.

Fortis commissioned its first hospital in 2001 at Mohali, near Chandigarh, and has expanded its operations to become a network with an 8,000 bed capacity across 48 hospitals.

India's healthcare market alone was worth about US$38 billion in 2009, and is expected to increase by US$62.9 billion during the next four years, according to Fortis Healthcare.

-tabla!