Bumi says has no proof Bakrie family has cash for split

November 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Bumi says has no proof Bakrie family has cash for split

10:11am EST

LONDON (Reuters) – London-listed coalminer Bumi Plc (BUMIP.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will press ahead with a December vote on a planned split with the Bakrie family, its Indonesian co-founders, despite having no guarantees the family can finance the deal, the company said on Friday. Bumi was created in 2010 to bring Indonesian mining assets to London investors but has faced bitter shareholder battles against the background of tumbling thermal coal prices.The company said late on Thursday that shareholders would vote on December 4 on the complex separation deal that the miner’s board hopes will allow it to start afresh and bring the Bakrie family’s involvement to an end.

The planned split will see the Bakries selling their stake in the London-listed company to their current partner and outgoing chairman Samin Tan.

The Bakries will then buy back London-listed Bumi’s 29.2 percent stake in troubled Jakarta-listed unit PT Bumi (BUMI.JK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) for $501 million, above the current market price.

Both deals should happen simultaneously.

However, unless the Bakries can provide the cash portion – close to $280 million, to account for the difference in price between the London stake price and the Jakarta-listed holding – the agreement would collapse before its estimated completion date of mid-December, leaving Bumi unable to move ahead with plans to rebrand and refocus the group around its Berau unit.

“We have repeatedly sought assurances on financing,” Bumi CEO Nick von Schirnding said, adding that none had been provided.

“Obviously, it would have been (better) to have all the money in escrow … but these are challenging times.”

Though one of Indonesia’s most influential families and rich in assets, the Bakries have on occasions only narrowly averted critical financial squeezes. A deal to sell free-to-air television station ANTV, owned by the Bakries’ Visi Media Asia (VIVA.JK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and thought to provide cash for the Bumi split, collapsed in September.

The family, though, brushed off concerns over cash.

“The Bakries have placed $50 million in escrow as a break fee, which they have no intention of losing,” Bakrie spokesman Chris Fong said, encouraging shareholders to back the deal.

“The balance will be made available at the right time.”

Bumi has separately been trying to recover cash lost at Berau after it reached a deal with a former executive, Rosan Roeslani, to claw back $173 million. It said on Thursday that it had now begun arbitration proceedings after Roeslani failed to make an initial payment of $30 million in cash by September 26.

“We have a clearly set out agreement with Rosan Roeslani, which is enforceable under English law,” von Schirnding said. “We are going to enforce this agreement.”

Financier Nat Rothschild, a co-founder of Bumi alongside the Bakries and a critic of the current management, said the failure to recover the cash from Roeslani “represents a material change to the terms of the previously announced separation”.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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