Primary Health Beats Healthscope in Race for Symbion (Update2)

Primary Health Care Ltd. won control
of Symbion Health Ltd., ending a yearlong conflict with
Healthscope Ltd. to catch a 3rd of Australia's pathology market.

Primary, based in Sydney, have 52.3 percentage of Symbion,
Australia's greatest health-care company, it said in a statement
today. Symbion said yesterday its managers would drop their
opposition to Primary's A$2.1 billion ($1.9 billion) offering if it
gained more than than 50.1 percent.

Controlling Symbion gives Primary Managing Director Edmund
Bateman 36 percentage of Australia's A$2.1 billion pathology market,
trailing only Sonic Healthcare Ltd. with 38 percent. Healthscope,
which was forced to trash a A$2.8 billion offering for Primary in
December, have 18 percentage of the market, according to UBS AG.

''Ed Bateman is obviously very patient,'' said Marcus
Wilson, a health-care analyst with Macquarie Equities in Sydney. ''He's seen this chance for a long time, so he played the
cat and mouse game in order to halt Symbion going to Healthscope
and also to guarantee he acquires a less price. He played it so well. It was beautiful to watch.''

Harriet Wilson have an ''outperform'' evaluation on Primary and expects
the shares to attain A$13.27 within 12 months. Primary hide 2
cents to A$10.22 on the Australian Stock Exchange. Symbion rose
for the 7th consecutive day, gaining 1 cent to A$4.07.

Cash Offer

Primary in November offered A$4.10 for each of the 80
percent of Symbion's shares it didn't already own, betting an
all-cash offer would enable it to overcome Healthscope in gaining
control of Melbourne-based Symbion's 92 medical clinics and 130
diagnostic imagination centers.

Primary increased its interest in Symbion to 25.7 percentage and
received understandings from other stockholders to sell Primary
another 26.6 percent, it said today.

Healthscope, based in Melbourne, have almost 12 percentage of
Symbion, which may enable it to halt Primary stretch the 90
percent ownership threshold at which it can compulsorily acquire
all remaining stock.

Healthscope dumped its cash-and-shares offering for Symbion's
medical and diagnostic centres Nov. Twenty-Seven after Australia's tax
office ruled Symbion investors would have got to pay working capital gains
tax on Healthscope stock offered as portion of the bid. The offer
valued Symbion shares at between A$4.23 and A$4.43 apiece.

Primary have borrowed A$534.3 million to fund its command for
Symbion, it said in a statement yesterday. Primary made its
first command for Symbion in December 2006, offering A$2.3 billion,
or else one of its shares for every four Symbion shares.

To reach the newsman on this story:
Simeon Floyd Bennett in Capital Of Singapore at .