Bank Bali warrants exceed foreign limit

Bank Bali warrants exceed foreign limit

JAKARTA (JP): Foreign investors will not be able to convert
their Bank Bali warrants into shares as long as the bank's
foreign portion remains bought out.

"It's something beyond our authority. We have to comply with
the regulation which imposes a 49 percent (of total listed shares
of a company) ceiling for foreign ownership," said an executive
of the bank, Firman Soetjahja.

Firman announced yesterday that with the current stockholder
composition, in which foreign ownership has reached 49 percent,
any conversion of warrants will exceed the foreign ownership
ceiling, thus violating the regulation.

In August 1995, Bank Bali issued 65 million rights shares and
37.2 million detachable warrants to be listed on the Jakarta
Stock Exchange.

The bank offered its shareholders the purchase of seven rights
for every 20 old shares at Rp 2,000 (86 U.S. cents) each and four
warrants to be converted at Rp 2,900.

Bank Bali stated in the prospectus for the rights issue that
the shareholders could start to convert their warrants on Feb.
29, 1996.

The warrants will automatically lose value if the shareholders
fail to convert them before the expiry date of Feb. 29, 2000.

Bank Bali's senior vice president, Hendri Kurniawan, said that
foreign investors should wait until local investors converted
their warrants.

"Unfortunately, it's not the right time for local
investors to do so because Bank Bali's local prices do not offer
gains as much as the foreign prices do," he said.

Bank Bali's local prices closed only Rp 100 above the
warrants, priced at Rp 3,000 yesterday. On the contrary, the
foreign price closed at Rp 5,600 or 93 percent higher than the
warrants price.

"The only thing we can do now is refund shareholders who paid
for the conversion," said Hendri. (08)