New board appointed at NMC to implement changes

NMC Health, which has been placed under a UK court-appointed administration, announced on Monday the formation of a new board of directors that has been entrusted with the immediate priority of implementing corporate governance changes in the group.

Richard Fleming, Mark Firmin and Ben Cairns of Alvarez & Marsal Europe, the joint administrators, have appointed four new non-executive directors with broad international restructuring experience to provide more robust governance and oversee the work with the management teams in the individual NMC businesses.

"The previous board of directors ceased to have decision-making powers with the appointment of the administrators and have now all been removed from the board," joint administrators said in a statement.

Consequent to the new move, Faisal Belhoul, Ayesha Mohammed, Jonathan Bomford, Patrick James Meade, Salma Ali Saif bin Hareb and Tarek Alnabulsi were removed from the board that was formed only weeks ago.

Michael Brenden Davis remains in post as interim chief executive officer and chief operating officer but does not sit on the board while Simon Watkins remains group company secretary. Nirman Shetty, chief operating officer distribution, has left the business.

The administrators were appointed to the debt-ridden NMC by the High Court of England and Wales on April 9, 2020 following a petition presented by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, one of NMC's largest creditors. The administration applies only to NMC Health, the holding company of the largest private healthcare group in the UAE.

"The administrators' primary objective is to ensure the continuity of patient care, stability for staff and suppliers, and immediate financial security for NMC Plc's operating companies. The operating entities are unaffected by the administrators' appointment and current activities will continue at NMC's hospitals, medical centres, care facilities and other services," said the statement.

The London-listed healthcare provider, which has been ravaged by scandals of financial irregularities and inflated bottom line ever since US short-seller came out with shocking revelations of its state of affairs, currently has a market value of $2.4 billion and total debt pile of $6.6 billion. Several UAE-listed lenders, including ADCB that has the largest outstanding of Dh3 billion, had revealed details of their total exposure exceeding Dh7.66 billion to NMC Healthcare as well as to Finablr, a global payments platform that was also founded by NMC founder BR Shetty.

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