Trimegah plans to resell Indomobil
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Publicly listed PT Trimegah Securities said it planned reselling PT Indomobil Sukses Internasional in five years time, after a consortium it led purchased a 72 percent stake in the company from the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).
Trimegah president Avi Dwipayana said the company and its partners in the consortium intended to first restructure Indomobil and then sell it at a higher price.
"We're not a strategic investor, the first thing we do is to make the company (Indomobil) look good, ... if we succeed in doing this, we don't rule out selling it to others," he told reporters at his office.
Trimegah closed a deal on Friday for the purchase of a 73.63 percent stake in Indomobil valued at Rp 625 billion (about US$61.75 million).
The deal aroused suspicions that Indomobil's former owner, the Salim Group, had used Trimegah as a nominee to regain control over the company.
IBRA has banned the Salim Group from buying back Indomobil, after the group surrendered the company to repay debts to the agency.
The agency took control of Indomobil because Salim owed IBRA some Rp 52 trillion, which was the cost of bailing out Salim's bank, Bank Central Asia.
But even if Salim's money was not behind the Indomobil deal, IBRA cannot stop Trimegah from reselling the company to Salim at a later date.
The purchasing agreement incorporates a lock-up clause that bars Trimegah's consortium from divesting its stake in Indomobil within two years of closing the deal.
Once that period ends, Trimegah and the other investors in the consortium are free to sell their stake in Indomobil.
When asked whether reselling Indomobil had been Trimegah's intention when it purchased its stake in the company, Avi said "yes".
He said Trimegah would sell its stake in Indomobil if offered a good deal, but added he did not speak on behalf of the other investors.
Avi declined to identify the investors, but said there were three of them, including Trimegah.
Earlier this week, the head of IBRA's oversight committee, Mar'ie Muhammad, called for an audit of the transaction to ensure that Salim had not been behind it.
But IBRA chief I Gede Putu Ary Suta said the deal would not be annulled, as every stage of the acquisition had followed relevant procedures.
He did not say whether those procedures were capable of filtering out Salim from the investors under Trimegah.
Avi further warned that reviewing the deal would be detrimental to IBRA's future asset sales.
On restructuring Indomobil, he said the first priority would be to talk to its creditors and secure a debt restructuring deal.
"Indomobil's debts amount to Rp 4.6 trillion, its total assets are worth only Rp 4.2 trillion -- this company is short Rp 400 billion in capital," Avi said, adding:" If creditors don't want debt restructuring we're dead."
One of the largest creditors is the Japanese Marubeni Corp, to whom Indomobil owes $100 million. Other creditors include Societe Generale and IMG Sejahtera Langgeng.
Avi said that, to repay its debts, Indomobil would need to dispose of inefficient subsidiaries and those that were not related to its core business.
Indomobil is a car manufacturer and the authorized dealer for a number of brands including Suzuki, Nissan, Mazda, Hino, Volvo, Audi, Volkswagen and Songyang, and recently also Renault.