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Standard Chartered will make bid with Singapore

Standard Chartered Plc, is joining with the Government of Singapore Investment Corp to make a bid for a 51 percent stake in Indonesia's PT Bank Central Asia, according to a Reuters report carried by the Straits Times newspaper.

Standard Chartered emerged as the largest contender on a shortlist of nine potential bidders for BCA, a lender Indonesia nationalized during its 1997-1998 financial crisis.

The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, which injected 61 trillion rupiah (US$6 billion) of interest-bearing bonds to prevent the lender's collapse, set a Jan. 28 deadline for the submission of final bids. IBRA holds about 60 percent of BCA, the lender with the widest network of automated teller machines in Indonesia.

A spokeswoman for Standard Chartered in Singapore who declined to be named said the UK-based lender confirmed it's one of the bidders though said "it is too early" to comment on its joint partners.

"We're looking for potential investors that bring something strategic to the overall arrangement," Ray Ferguson, Standard Chartered Indonesia country manager, said in an interview today with the daily English-language Jakarta Post. "Maybe insurance companies in Indonesia, or from outside Indonesia, [but] not banks."

An acquisition of BCA by an overseas bank will help lift investor sentiment towards Indonesia, where political opposition has previously derailed acquisitions by foreign buyers, including Standard Chartered's attempt to buy PT Bank Bali in 1999.
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