Monday, November 27, 2006

Persistent Acts to Destroy Bumi Stakes

Bumiputera controlled AMMB earlier declared its interest and intention to divest 25% of its Bumi-shareholdings to ANZ, an Australian and New Zealand Banking group.

Proton, too, had announced it's intention to seek a foreign partner and it was reported that VW was to get a 51% stake in it's manufacturing operations. That will reduce the Bumi's stake and at the same time, Khazanah will lose it's controlling stakes.

Now,another bank is prepared to divest the Bumi-stakes to foreigners.

Bank Muamalat controlling shareholder Bukhary Capital, a company owned by tycoon Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Albukhary, will divest 30 per cent of its 70 per cent stake in the bank next year. The remaining 30 per cent stake is held by Khazanah Nasional Bhd. Bank Muamalat Bhd is Malaysia's second largest Islamic bank.

"The way I look at it, if we have a local partner, the value added is not that much compared with a foreign partner from, say, the Gulf countries, which would enable us to have a foothold (in the market) automatically," chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Manap Abd Wahab told Business Times on Saturday.

Earlier in the year there was market speculation about merger talks between Bank Muamalat and Bahrain- based Unicorn Investment Bank BSC when the latter failed to buy 49 per cent of Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd (BIMB).

How does the govt and UMNO achieve 30% equity control when they keep divesting their current stakes and then keep crying they were robbed of the equity at their party's general assembly. Who was the cause of their sales? For whatever reasons, they made decisions best known to themselves but the fact remains that they chose to dilute the current purported 18.9% Bumi's stakes (they claimed but the researchers disagreed) and at the same time wanted to have the psychological 30% stake.

Justice can never be served.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A salesman tell his loyal customers he won't sell his last Proton because of pride values. Then the European came and proposed to rent the Proton for at a bargain rate, the salesman says no problem!

sound familiar?