The on-again, off-again bidding war for Grant Hospital is back on again.
Financially troubled Grant has reopened the sales process to a second bidder after a proposed buyer recently lowered its bid, say attorneys involved in the sale.
Merit Health Systems, a Denver-based for-profit company trying to buy its first hospital, no longer wants to pay $21 million, the price disclosed after the board and Merit signed a letter of intent in April.
Since then, Merit completed a due diligence examination and no longer believes the hospital is worth that much, Grant attorneys said. Grant wouldn’t disclose Merit’s new bid and Merit executives wouldn’t return calls.
“There is a lot of give and take going on,” said Robert Baudino, a Des Moines lawyer hired by Grant to find a buyer.
Although Baudino said Merit is still a possible purchaser, Grant’s board is entertaining an undisclosed offer from Chicago-based Physicians, Hospitals & Health Care Centers Inc., a group led by Chicago physician Dr. Roberto Diaz.
It’s unclear when a deal may be reached with either party, Baudino said.
Timing, however, isn’t as much of an issue for Grant as it was earlier this year when Grant was running out of cash and in jeopardy of closing.
The hospital is still losing money, but inpatient admissions have doubled to 120 in June from 60 in January. “We are stable,” Grant Chief Executive Clarence Nagelvoort said.
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Grant was put on the sale block last year amid fallout from financial problems of its sister facility, Edgewater Medical Center, which closed last year, having incurred millions of dollars in losses and debts.
Bid for Northfield Labs’ board: Once again, Lake Forest investor Robert Coates is trying to have a say in the management of Northfield Laboratories Inc., an Evanston biotech company struggling to win approval for its promising blood substitute, Polyheme.
Coates this week registered himself and a friend as a rival slate of directors seeking seats on Northfield’s six-member board, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Coates, who owns 644,200, or nearly 5 percent, of Northfield’s outstanding shares, is upset that the stock has fallen in the wake of regulatory roadblocks for Polyheme. Northfield’s shares rose 35 cents Wednesday to close at $4.70, down considerably from their 52-week high of $21.25 on the Nasdaq.
Coates says Northfield would be better run by a larger drug company or executives experienced with the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process. He also says Northfield management has kept shareholders in the dark about Polyheme’s status before the FDA.
Northfield Chief Executive Richard DeWoskin says the application process is not the issue. He says the FDA’s problems with the application are focused on certain manufacturing processes and “chemistries” the company plans to use in the production of Polyheme.
“We have seen this behavior in previous years from the same shareholder,” DeWoskin said. “It will be distracting when we are moving forward with the FDA. We will see what happens.”