Astra's unit sales completed

Astra's unit sales completed

SINGAPORE (Dow Jones): PT Astra Indonesia has completed the sale an electronics unit to a U.S.-owned investment fund, one of the first sales by a debt-ridden Indonesian group.

An Astra executive and CIBC World Markets, its advisors, told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday that all documentation for the US$90 million sale to Newbridge Capital Asia was completed Tuesday night in Jakarta. "The deal is done and the payment will be made shortly," the Astra executive said.

In the transaction, first agreed to in September, Astra sold PT Astra Microtronics Technology, an integrated circuit assembly and test subcontractor on Batam Island, about 20 kilometers from Singapore.

Newbridge is mostly owned by two U.S. private investors, Texas Pacific Group and Richard C. Blum & Associates of San Francisco. (Blum is married to California Senator Dianne Feinstein.) Newbridge manages more than US$8 billion.