ONE of Britain’s biggest private healthcare operators has emerged as a surprise bidder for Cannons, the gym chain that was put up for sale last year.

Nuffield Hospitals, headed by chief executive David Mobbs, is believed to be in talks to acquire the business from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which has owned it since 2001. Cannons is estimated to be worth about £200m.

The hospitals group, which was founded in 1957, is a not-for-profit organisation and a registered charity, so it is not immediately clear how a deal would be financed. But Nuffield has previously made an initial, much smaller foray into the fitness sector, picking up Sona, a business that runs in-house gyms for big companies, in 2005.

A spokesman for Nuffield said: “I can’t comment on any partnership or opportunity that might occur.”

A number of other parties have also been eyeing Cannons, which hired Hawkpoint, the specialist corporate-finance firm, to advise it on a sale last year. It is not clear what stage the Nuffield talks have reached or when a deal might be concluded.

RBS backed a £360m management buyout of Cannons six years ago, but it is unlikely to recoup that amount should a sale be agreed. Analysts suggest the operation is worth about £200m today.

It is difficult to get an up-to-date picture of Cannons’s financial performance. The most recent publicly available accounts, which cover the year to December 2005, show it made a pretax loss of £27m on turnover of £105m. The figures for 2006 are due to be filed at Companies House by the end of this month.

There have been a series of deals in the fitness-club sector over the past two years as the pace of consolidation has speeded up.

London & Regional, the property company, acquired the Next Generation and David Lloyd Leisure chains, while Bannatyne Fitness bought rival Living Well from Hilton, the hotel group.

Less happily, Simon Halabi, the property investor, bought the Esporta chain earlier this year, but the parent company of the business has been placed into administration.

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