Peregrine, Sewu jointly set up investment firm

JAKARTA (JP): The Hong Kong-based Peregrine Investment Holdings, the largest Asian investment bank outside of Japan, is expanding its business here to participate in the growing economies of South East Asia, Chairman Philip Tose says

Tose said in a press conference yesterday that Peregrine teamed up with the Jakarta-based Gunung Sewu Group to found Peregrine Indonesia Fund (PIF), a Cayman Island investment company listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, to bring foreign capital into Indonesia.

He estimated that PIF's first closing later this month will exceed US$50 million while the second in the end of 1994 will go between $90-100 million.

Husodo Angkosubroto, Peregrine's Indonesian partner and principal of the Gunung Sewu Group, said that Peregrine could bring as much as $1 billion in investment funds to areas such as power, telecommunications and transportation.

Government officials said that Indonesia needs US$305 billion in investment during the current Five Year Development Plan (Repelita VI) and 73 percent of the total is expected from the private sector, including foreign investors.

"At least some 80 percent of the funds to be brought in by PIF will be biased on medium and long term venture capital opportunities where the exit will be a public listing," said Patrick Alexander, the managing director of the company, adding that the fund life is seven years from the first closing.

Alexander, who lived in Indonesia for 10 years as an Australian diplomat, said that Indonesia is in need of foreign capital.

Tose said that the investors include institutional fund managers, pension funds and individuals from the United States, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Middle East, Hong Kong and other Asian countries.

He added that Peregrine will invest a maximum of 15 percent of its assets in an enterprise.

Peregrine will help unlisted companies, which need capital as well as management assistance, to improve performance and, in the long run, list their shares on stock exchanges, he said. (09)