AMI to Move Its Headquarters From Beverly Hills to Dallas

American Medical International, saddled with debt from a $1.67-billion buyout completed in October, said Tuesday that it will leave its home in Beverly Hills for a more economical headquarters in Dallas.

About 200 employees in Beverly Hills will be affected by the move, which is to take place next September, the company said. Unaffected are another 200 employees who work at AMI’s data center near Marina del Rey and in insurance and benefits units in Costa Mesa.

The move will help foster “a new corporate culture that is reflective of the new AMI,” Harry J. Gray, chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. The “new AMI, company officials have previously indicated, will stress leanness, given the debt burden resulting from its buyout.

“Relocating our corporate headquarters to the Dallas area is prudent from economic, geographic and philosophic perspectives,” Gray said. “Dallas represents significant cost savings over Beverly Hills. It is more central in relation to our hospitals, which are located across the Sun Belt.” AMI officials said recently that the company would sell its 23 foreign hospitals and an undetermined number of its 48 U.S. hospitals to reduce debt. Other cost-cutting moves were announced then, including the intent to reduce the 1,500-member administrative staff.

About 60 employees in the Beverly Hills office were laid off recently, an AMI spokeswoman said. The company said it is developing incentive programs for employees offered a transfer to Dallas and would help place other employees.

“We regret that this move means we will lose many valued employees,” Gray said.

AMI, founded in Los Angeles in 1956, was a pioneer of the for-profit hospital industry. It moved to Beverly Hills in 1973. Burdened by debt and squeezed by cost cutting in the federal Medicaid program in the 1980s, however, AMI and its competitors fell on hard times.

The company was attempting a turnaround when it received a buyout offer in March. After a bidding contest, IMA Acquisition Corp., formed by First Boston Corp., Gray, and Mel Klein & Partners--a firm backed by Chicago’s wealthy Pritzker family--acquired the company in a deal valued at $1.67 billion, the second-most-costly buyout in the health-care industry.