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.