Bakrie sells share in Kasei to Mitsubishi
Bakrie sells share in Kasei to Mitsubishi
JAKARTA (JP): The extraordinary shareholders meeting of
publicly listed PT Bakrie & Brothers decided on Friday to sell
the company's entire stake in chemical producer PT Bakrie Kasei
Corporation (BKC) to Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. for US$51.1
million.
Bakrie agreed to sell all of its 378,637 shares, or 25.54
percent of BKC, to repay part of the company's debt, that totals
$1.052 billion.
"However, the $51.1 million in proceeds can only cover about
five percent of Bakrie's total debt," Bakrie's chief commissioner
Aburizal Bakrie told reporters.
With the sales, Mitsubishi's shares in BKC will increase from
the current 57.37 percent to 82.91 percent.
BKC was founded in 1991 to produce purified terephthalic acid.
It has assets valued at $477 million.
Its net sales as of June this year, reached $167.6 million
with operating profits of $12.9 million.
To appraise Bakrie's share of BKC, Bakrie appointed
independent consultant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
Aburizal said that Mitsubishi was willing to pay more for
BKC's 25.52 percent stake, which according Deloitte was worth
only between $31 million and $48 million.
Using what it called the cash flow approach, Deloitte valued
BKC's total stake at between $121 million and $188 million.
"Mitsubishi was willing to pay more, as a sign of appreciation
for our good working relations," Bakrie's spokesman Lalu Mara
Satriawangsa later told The Jakarta Post.
With the deal, Bakrie's total debt would drop from $1.052
billion to about $1 billion, he said.
Mara said that of the $1 billion in debt, 90 percent was owed
to foreign creditors and 10 percent was owed to the Indonesian
Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).
He said that because all of the creditors had agreed to settle
the debt through a debt for equity swap, the proceeds from the
BKC divestment would be kept in an escrow account until another
agreement is made.
Aside from Mitsubishi, BKC is also owned by Japan Asia
Investment Co. Ltd, and Japan Asia Venture Fund.
Bakrie was founded in 1951, and is the majority shareholder of
eight subsidiaries in diverse business fields.
Its wholly owned subsidiaries include cast iron producer PT
Bakrie Tosanjaya, corrugated steel sheet manufacturer PT Bakrie
Corrugated Metal, asbestos and cement pipes producer PT Bakrie
Building Corporations, welding steel pipe company PT Bakrie Pipe
Industries, power transmission & energy provider PT Bakrie Power
Corporation, telecommunication firm PT Bakrie Communications
Corporation, plantation firm PT Bakrie Sumatra Plantations and
profile iron producer PT Trans Bakrie. (bkm)