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Employees sit on the helpdesk reception of the Fortis Memorial Hospital at Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, May 20, 2015.Reuters file

Shares of Fortis Healthcare, the super-speciality hospitals' chain, have dropped 12.9 percent to close at Rs 172.30 on Friday after Malaysia's Integrated Healthcare Holdings (IHH) reportedly pulled out of talks to acquire a stake in the company, controlled by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh.

Promoters, including Malvinder and Shivinder, own 52.30 percent stake in Fortis Healthcare; foreign portfolio investors including Nomura, Standard Chartered, Morgan Stanley, East Bridge Capital Master and International Finance Corporation hold 34.5 percent stake. Retail investors hold close to 7.8 percent, according to shareholding pattern details as of March 31, 2017.

A clarification by the company at around 1 pm on the matter could not stem the fall in the share price of Fortis Healthcare that operates in Dubai, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, apart from India.

The Fortis board's decision to approve option for raising funds up to Rs 5,000 crore had fuelled speculations of a stake sale, though the company kept its options open. "Please note that the company is still evaluating the best-possible way to raise the fund and no firm decision in this regard has been approved by the board till date. We will keep the stock exchanges updated/informed...," the company said in a regulatory filing to the BSE.

The statement implied that the company did not rule out stake sale as one of the options to raise funds to drive growth.

For the year ended March 31, 2017, Fortis Healthcare reported consolidated revenues of Rs 4,573 crore and net profit of Rs 479 crore.