Chiefs of two Fortis arms moving out

The chief executive officers (CEOs) of two key arms of India's second-largest private hospital chain, Fortis, are set to move out.

While Vishal Bali, the CEO of Fortis Hospitals, has relinquished his post to take charge as head of Fortis Global Healthcare (FGL) in Singapore, Bhavdeep Singh, the CEO of listed entity Fortis Healthcare Ltd, is resigning from his post on personal reasons. A company spokesperson said the developments were not related.

Fortis Hospitals, a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare, manages all 10 hospitals that Fortis acquired from Wockhardt Hospitals over a year before.

FGL, meant to be the overseas business vehicle of Fortis, is a Singapore-registered entity that is wholly-owned by the billionaire brothers, Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh.

Fortis on Tuesday announced that Vishal Bali has been appointed as FGL's CEO with immediate effect. The timing is linked to the completion of FGL's first acquisition abroad, Quality Healthcare, in Hong Kong in the coming week.

Quality is the largest private integrated healthcare service platform in Hong Kong, providing medical and allied health services.

The acquired businesses comprise a network of 60 wholly-owned medical centres, over 500 affiliated clinics, 40 dental and physiotherapy centres, and a private nursing agency with a database of 3,000-odd nurses.

Fortis Healthcare's managing director, Shivinder Singh, said Quality would continue to operate under the existing management, to now report to Bali. The latter has spent 19 years running the Wockhardt Hospitals Group in India. He moved to Fortis after the acquisition.

Bhaveep Singh said his reason to quit Fortis was purely personal. "My decision to resign was taken about a month ago and I will serve Fortis till mid-January, before moving back to the United States", he Singh said.

A US citizen, he was associated with US supermarket chain A & P for a long period before he came to India to head Spencer Retail and moved on to Reliance Fresh, before taking charge as CEO of Fortis in 2009.

According to Fortis' management, the company is yet to identify the successors for Bali. It also termed too early to decide the future structure of its domestic operations, currently under different subsidiary companies.