The promoters of Fortis Healthcare have revoked about 39 million pledged shares or nearly 10% of the total outstanding equity. After the June 22 transaction, total percentage of shares pledged by promoter firm Fortis Healthcare Holdings Ltd (FHHL) has fallen to 31% from 38.12%.

FHHL revoked 3,91,77,192 shares, nearly 10% of the total outstanding shares, the company said in a filing to the BSE.

After the transaction, the numbers of pledged shares of Fortis Healthcare held by FHHL stands at 12,56,40,500, which is 31.02% of total outstanding shares in the healthcare chain, the filing added. The company did not provide further details of the transaction in the stock exchange disclosure.

As per the BSE information as on March 31, 2010, FHHL held a 76.32% stake in Fortis Healthcare. The company is currently engaged in a bidding battle with the Malaysian government?s investment arm Khazanah for control of Singapore-based hospital chain, Parkway Holdings.

Earlier, Fortis promoters had announced that the Singapore government?s investment arm GIC had deferred its decision on the committed investment of Rs 380 crore to buy a stake of around 6.6% in the Indian healthcare firm.

Then the Indian player, which is also the largest shareholder in Parkway, had said that the GIC could consider participating in a larger fundraising plan of Fortis at some point later.

Subsequently, Fortis made a counter offer of $2.3 billion to acquire the remaining share in Parkway. This was in response to Khazanah?s partial offer $835 million in May to lift its stake to 51.5% from 23% in Parkway. In another development, Parkway Holdings independent directors have assured that they have always acted in the interest of all shareholders and will continue to do so in future. This has come from Tan See Leng, CEO & MD; Richard Seow, vice-chairman and Lim Cheok Peng, executive vice-chairman of Parkway.

They are independent directors whose action came in for some criticism after certain sections of the press claimed that they had a prior pact with US private equity TPG.