Bumi competes to buy Newmont divestment stake

Indonesian largest coal miner PT Bumi Resources, through its subsidiary PT Multicapital, is competing with three firms to buy a 10 percent divestment stake in copper and gold miner PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (NNT), Investor Daily reported on Friday.

The three firms are Northstar Pacific Indonesia, a private equity fund linked with America?s Texas Pacific Group; local firm Valco Corp; and Batavia Plc, a subsidiary of London-listed Amstelco Plc.

All the firms are offering to become the partner of PT Daerah Maju Bersaing (DMB), a consortium established by the West Nusa Tenggara provincial administration and the Sumbawa and Sumbawa Barat regency administrations, which holds the right to buy the 10 percent stake.

According to Fauzi Agam, Multicapital had offered $391 million to buy the 10 percent stake that NNT had to sell in the divestment period of 2006-2007. An international arbitration panel has obliged NNT to sell a 3 percent stake at the price of $109 million for the 2006 divestment period and a 7 percent stake at the price of $282 million for the 2007 divestment period.

Fauzi said Multicapital offered to finance the acquisition and give 25 percent of the acquired stake to DMB for free.

According to Fauzi, Batavia has made a similar offer to DMB. What makes Batavia attractive is that the firm pledged to acquire a total of 51 percent stake in NNT and made DMB a partner in the ownership of the whole shares, Fauzi said.

When asked for comments, Bumi?s investor relation official Dileep Srivastava said he could not comments because he did not have accurate information about the matter. (*)