Egyptian healthcare tycoon Hend El Sherbini's $291 million take-private draws zero acceptances

Hend El Sherbini's attempt to take Integrated Diagnostics Holdings private has found no takers.

As of July 22, not one shareholder had accepted the offer of 50 cents a share from the vehicle she owns with her mother, according to an acceptance update filed in London. The offer lapses on July 29 unless it is extended.

Hena Holdings Ltd. still holds 288,445,383 IDH shares, roughly 49.6% of the company. That is where it stood on the day the offer was announced a month ago.

The bid values IDH at about $290.7 million. It is pitched at an 11.2% discount to the closing price of 56.3 cents on June 22, the last trading day before the announcement. Hena has said the price is final and will not be increased.

How the offer was triggered

Hena is a British Virgin Islands vehicle wholly owned by El Sherbini, IDH's chief executive, and her mother, Dr. Moamena Abdul Wahab Kamel. It holds shares in no company other than IDH.

On June 23 it bought 126 million shares, a 21.67% stake, from Actis IDH Limited, an entity controlled by funds managed by Elliott Investment Management. The purchase cost about $63 million at the offer price and lifted Hena from 162,445,383 shares, or 27.94%, to 49.62%.

Crossing 30% obliged Hena to bid for everything it did not already own under Rule 9 of the UK City Code on Takeovers and Mergers. The offer was a legal consequence of buying out Elliott rather than a separate decision to acquire the company.

The financing

Hena is funding both the Elliott purchase and the offer through a $60 million loan and equity subscriptions from El Sherbini and her mother. Those subscriptions run between roughly $43 million and $150 million depending on how many shareholders accept.

The pair signed a funding commitment letter backed by a first demand guarantee from UBS Europe SE's Luxembourg branch. Canaccord Genuity, acting as Hena's financial adviser, confirmed the resources available were sufficient to cover the full cash consideration.

Baker McKenzie advised Hena on the transaction. Strand Hanson is advising IDH. The company's independent directors, excluding El Sherbini and Sherif El Zeiny because of their connection to the bidder, are reviewing the terms and have told shareholders to take no action until they issue a recommendation. Richard Henry Phillips stepped down from the IDH board with immediate effect on the day of the announcement.

Why holders are not selling

The business they are being asked to leave is growing quickly. IDH lifted pretax profit 47% to 2.12 billion Egyptian pounds in 2025 from 1.44 billion the year before. Revenue rose 37% to 7.89 billion pounds from 5.72 billion.

The group runs roughly 628 branches across Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia under the Al Borg, Al Mokhtabar, Biolab and Echo-Lab brands. It is Cairo-born and London-listed, one of the few African healthcare groups to have taken that route.

Hena has also said it does not intend to seek a delisting unless its holding reaches 75% or more, and that it plans to maintain IDH's existing business and strategic plans. That removes the usual pressure on minorities. Shareholders who decline the offer can expect the stock to keep trading, so there is little reason to sell at a discount into a bid the company's own earnings do not support.

What happens now

El Sherbini did not set out to buy the company outright. She was obliged to offer once the Elliott purchase carried her past the threshold, and she priced the obligation at a level she was content for shareholders to refuse.

If the offer lapses on July 29 at the current level, she will hold just under half of the group she runs, having spent about $63 million removing an activist investor from the register and gained nothing further. Whether that was the objective all along is a question the independent directors' recommendation may yet address.