Indosat names new board of directors

Indosat names new board of directors

Dow Jones, Jakarta

Shareholders of international call provider PT Indonesian Satellite Corp. (Indosat) Thursday named Widya Purnama as president director, replacing Hari Kartana.

Widya was former president director of Indosat's unit PT Electronic Data Interchange.

Indosat shareholders also named Hasnul Suhaeni as commercial director, Junino Jahya as finance director, Wityasmoro Sihandayanto as business development director, and Emil Sudarno as operational director.

The government, which owns 56.9 percent of Indosat sought to replace Indosat's former top management after the government failed to sell an 11.3 percent stake in Indosat through private placement last month. The government had to scale back the size to 8.1 percent due to the poor response from investors.

The government blamed the poor reception partly on Indosat management's attempt to issue rights shares to fund the purchase of a 25 percent stake in its cellular unit, PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia, or Satelindo, from Deutsche Telekom AG.

Private investors had little incentive to buy Indosat's private placement shares, only to see their stakes diluted through a later rights issue.

Shareholders also Thursday approved a 2001 dividend payout of Rp 561.2 rupiah per share.

The payout is sharply higher than the Rp 140.3 management had proposed. The government had pressured the company to pay the Rp 561.2 dividend.

The government wanted a higher dividend to help raise more cash for the state budget, as it failed to raise sufficient cash from the sale of state-owned enterprises.

Last year Indosat paid a dividend of Rp 400 per share.

Indosat posted an 11 percent drop in 2001 net profit to Rp 1.465 trillion.