(Indonesia) – The Indonesian Government has cancelled its planned auction of a 51 percent stake in state-controlled Bank Niaga, blaming poor bidding but is still looking to sell the bank this year.Two consortia, one led by Malaysia’s Commerce Asset-Holding, the other by the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group ANZ, were reportedly final bidders for the stake. The Government has described the two bids as being well below recent market levels.
Indonesia’s state restructuring body, IBRA, which controls 97.15 percent of Niaga and its sale process, has noted that an alternative to the auction could be to reduce the initial holding to be sold to 10-15 percent and sell via the market rather than through a bidding process, with the remainder being offloaded through a tender offer or via a second offering later in the year.