Bank Universal looks for foreign partners

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly-listed Bank Universal is looking for foreign partners to strengthen its capital base and businesses in a time when the domestic banking industry is on the verge of collapse.

Bank Universal vice president Jerry Ng said on Thursday that the bank had been looking for foreign partners since early last year and hoped to strike deals later this year.

The bank had appointed Credit Suisse First Boston as a broker to attract foreign partners, as well as a financial advisor. It had also assigned the Boston Consulting Group to help improve its management.

Jerry said some foreign companies had shown interest in the bank, but he refused to name them or detail the number of shares Universal was offering.

The bank is 83.74 percent owned by publicly-listed diversified conglomerate PT Astra International. The remaining shares are owned by the public (12.57 percent) and PT Prahabima (3.09 percent).

Universal president Stephen Z. Satyahadi said the bank had signed up 37,000 new depositors in the first half of the year, raising the number of depositors by 24 percent.

Deposits at the bank reached Rp 7.7 trillion (US$700 million) as of August this year, a 64 percent increase from Rp 4.7 trillion at the end of last year.

"The fact that we increased the number of depositors despite the public's low confidence in private banks indicates that we are still trusted by the public," Stephen said.

The bank earlier announced that its net profit had dropped by 82.2 percent to Rp 3.5 billion in the first half of the year, from Rp 20.1 billion in the same period last year.

Stephen said the bank would continue to focus on retail banking businesses, targeting medium-sized enterprises in the country's big cities.

Stephen claimed that his bank was among those which had managed to avoid being put under the supervision of the Indonesian Banks Restructuring Agency (IBRA), as the bank had not received any liquidity support from the central bank.

Dozens of ailing private banks have been placed under IBRA's supervision for restructuring because they have received huge liquidity supports from the central bank.

The central bank has extended some Rp 140 trillion in liquidity supports to the country's troubled banks during the monetary crisis. (jsk)