Operating in a sector that is rife with takeover speculation can be no bad thing for a company’s share price. And so it was for NMC, the blue-chip specialist hospital operator based in Abu Dhabi, whose stock hit a peak last August of £41.20 as much on the back of a string of healthcare M&A deals as on its growth.
Since then, however, the bears and the short sellers have taken advantage of technical pressures on the share price after its founder and joint chairman posted stock as collateral for a loan using derivatives to protect himself from large changes in the price. Operationally, the company has continued to motor.
NMC Health is one of those FTSE 100 businesses that tends to slip under the