Muddy Waters Target NMC Health Plc Has a Credibility Problem - Bloomberg

Muddy Waters Target NMC Health Plc Has a Credibility Problem - Bloomberg:

When short-sellers such as Muddy Waters Capital LLC accuse listed companies of balance sheet manipulation, the target typically responds with their own lengthy rebuttal. Other investors caught in the middle often don’t know what to think and so a lot depends on the board’s credibility and transparency.

NMC Health Plc, the subject of Muddy Waters’s latest attack, is now a little short of both.

On Monday, the United Arab Emirates’ hospital operator and member of the FTSE 100, admitted that it doesn’t know how much of the company its major shareholders actually own. (This is separate to the Muddy Waters allegations, which focused on  the asset values, debt and cash balances that NMC reports, as well as governance issues).

Founder and chairman Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty is conducting a legal review to verify the size of his stake and that of two other Emirati controlling shareholders. These may have been “incorrectly reported historically to the company and the market,” NMC said in a statement.