IBRA to receive Rp 2.67t next week from BII sale
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) is expected to receive a total of Rp 2.67 trillion in cash next week from the sale of 71 percent of the shares in publicly listed Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII), according to agency Chairman Syafruddin Temenggung.
He said on Friday that some Rp 1.9 trillion would come from the Sorak Financial consortium, which bought a 51 percent stake in BII last month. The money would be received on Monday.
The consortium is led by South Korea's Kookmin Bank and Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd.
The remaining Rp 700 billion would be obtained from the sale of another 20 percent stake through the stock market, which is expected to take place on Monday.
Syafruddin said that with the completion of the BII sale, the agency has been able to meet the government's target to raise some Rp 26 trillion in cash to help finance the current 2003 state budget.
After selling the 71 percent stake, IBRA will still have another 22.5 percent stake in the bank. The remaining shares are in the hands of public investors.
IBRA, set up in 1998, took over various assets from troubled banks and indebted bank owners in the wake of the late 1990s financial crisis. The agency is mandated to restructure and sell the assets to raise cash to help finance the state budget. The huge amount of hard currency obtained by IBRA has been seen as a contributing factor to the current stability in the rupiah.
The government has decided to shut down IBRA in February next year. All of its remaining assets will be transferred to a special government entity.
Syafruddin said that once the money from Sorak has been received, a shareholder's meeting would be held on Tuesday to select the new board of directors and commissioners of BII.
According to the sales and purchase agreement, the Sorak consortium will have the right to fill in the position of the president director and president commissioner of BII. The consortium can also assign two other people as director and a commissioner.
BII, the former financial flagship of the Sinar Mas Group conglomerate, is one of the country's top ten banks with total assets of around Rp 36 trillion and has some 1.1 million customers.
The government can appoint two people to fill the position of vice president director and vice president commissioner.
Meanwhile, Jakarta stock market investors aggressively purchased shares in BII on expectations of a better performance of the bank with the entry of a new management team.
By midday on Friday, the shares rose by 16 percent on the Jakarta Stock Exchange amid an overall positive market sentiment.
"Buying is on hopes that Temasek and Kookmin Bank will be able to improve the bank's performance," a trader was quoted by Dow Jones as saying.