Business

Editor: Bruce Meng
7 Oct 2008 06:18:25 GMT

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 – Malaysia’s Maybank has been offered another 15 percent stake in Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) at a discount to its original offer price that will cut the total price by more than 200 million ringgit ($57.39 million).

The Edge Financial Daily reported on Tuesday that Maybank <MBBM.KL> will save another 205.5 million ringgit if it gets approval from Indonesian authorities to acquire a 15 percent stake in BII <BNII.JK> held by a group of U.S. hedge funds at 433 rupiah per share.

Maybank was not immediately available for comment.

"Sources said the hedge funds had offered to sell their shares to the Malaysian lender at a discount similar to that given by Temasek Holding’s Fullerton Financial Holdings," the newspaper said.

Maybank completed the acquisition of a 55.6 percent stake in BII last week from Fullerton Financial Holdings, a unit of Singapore’s Temasek [TEM.UL], and South Korea’s Kookmin Bank <060000.KS>, after the two cut their asking price by 758.9 million ringgit.

This made the final price of the stake 4.26 billion ringgit ($1.24 billion), though analysts said the deal remained expensive despite the cut in the price to the equivalent of 433 rupiah per share compared with 510 per share under the previous deal.

Maybank still has to tender for the outstanding BII shares at 510 rupiah per share.