Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings yesterday announced plans to buy Indonesia’s PT Bank Danamon for S$9.1 billion (US$7.3 billion) to ramp up its business in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
DBS will pay S$6.2 billion for the 67.37 percent stake held by a subsidiary of Singapore’s state investment firm Temasek Holdings’ Fullerton Financial Holdings and will finance the purchase through the issuance of new stock.
DBS will also launch a cash offer of S$2.9 billion for the rest of the shares in the Indonesian commercial bank, which will be financed from internal cash resources and future debt issuances, DBS said in a statement.
Temasek will not be totally out of the picture after the share sale — it currently has a 29.5 percent stake in DBS and this will rise to slightly above 40 percent after the deal is completed, a DBS spokeswoman said.
The bank has been looking to grow its Asian business in recent years and the proposed acquisition of Danamon is its biggest deal since the 2001 purchase of Hong Kong’s Dao Heng Bank (道亨銀行) for S$10 billion.
DBS said the purchase, which it expects to complete in the second half of this year, would immediately create the fifth-largest lender in Indonesia.
“Indonesia is an exciting Asian market and we believe that we will be able to contribute towards the growth of the Indonesian banking sector,” DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta said in the statement.
DBS, the biggest bank in Southeast Asia by assets, in February reported net profit last year rose an annual 15 percent to a record S$3.04 billion as income hit a record high of S$7.63 billion.
“Indonesia is one of the least penetrated banking markets in the world,” Gupta said in a media teleconference from Jakarta after the deal was announced.
“It has got a big domestic consumption economy so you’ve got a good mass market opportunity ... It has got a growing middle class so you have good retail opportunity,” he said.
Henry Ho, president director of Danamon, said in a statement that the two banks “should be complementary in many ways.”
Danamon has a “proven ability in serving the under-penetrated mass market segment in Indonesia,” he said.
DBS said Danamon, a full-service bank, has about 3,000 branches and outlets with a customer base of 6 million in a country of 240 million people.
DBS will issue 439 million new shares at an issue price of S$14.07 to pay for Temasek’s 67.37 percent stake.
The Singapore bank also said its S$2.9 billion cash offer for the remaining PT Bank Danamon stock is the equivalent of 7,000 Indonesian rupiah per share to minority shareholders.
It represents a 56.3 percent premium over the Indonesian bank’s one-month volume weighted average price of 4,480 Indonesian rupiah per share.
“To me, it’s a fairly priced deal, but for anybody to come and top this price, they will really have to pay something over the top,” Gupta said during the media conference.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six