SSE plans acquisition over-the-counter bourse

SSE plans acquisition over-the-counter bourse

JAKARTA (JP): PT Bursa Efek Surabaya, the manager of the
Surabaya Stock Exchange (SSE), will sign an agreement tomorrow on
the acquisition of the PT Bursa Paralel Indonesia (BPI), the
manager of the Jakarta-based parallel market.

"The signing ceremony of the memorandum of understanding will
take place at the Financial Club in Jakarta on July 22," a
director of the SSE, Helmy Azwary, said yesterday.

BPI will hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on July
28 to liquidate the firm, after which all assets, operations and
personnel will be under the management of SSE.

The meeting will also nominate candidates for the new
commissioners of SSE.

SSE and BPI currently have five commissioners each. However,
the number of SSE's commissioners will remain at five after the
acquisition process.

"The composition of commissioners may change but not the
management," Helmy said in a press gathering here.

He said BPI's 30 employees will increase the number of SSE's
personnel to 70 after the acquisition, while the number of the
shareholders will increase to 115

The total assets of SSE will be Rp 16 billion (US$7.1 million)
after acquisition.

"It is not compulsory for BPI's shareholders to join SSE,"
said Helmy, adding that those who intend to join SSE must
increase their capital participation from Rp 49 million to Rp 135
million within two years.

After the acquisition, SSE will maintain the current
procedures of trading on the parallel market within six months.

"It will be up to the management to change the procedures
after six months," Helmy said.

Saturday's signing of the agreement will end the long
arguments on the relationship between SSE and the Jakarta Stock
Exchange (JSX).

After the acquisition of BPI, SSE will maintain its name,
instead of changing into Bursa Efek Indonesia.

SSE's early operation was favored by the government's double
listing policy which required share issuers to cross-list their
shares both on JSX and SSE. The double listing policy was then
abolished following the privatization of JSX in 1992.

BPI manages the listing of the shares of small and medium-
scale public companies and conducts odd lot (less than 500
stocks) trading.(kod)