Dec 15, 2009
CEO: PNB may list property assets
KUALA LUMPUR: Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) is seeking ways to “maximise” returns on its newly-merged property unit, including a possible initial share sale.
“We will have to look at what’s the best for us,” chief executive officer Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman said yesterday. “It’s a matter of opportunity,” he said.
“It depends on the market conditions and the value that we create.”
Companies have been taking advantage of a resurgent stock market to list, with Maxis Bhd raising a record US$3.3bil last month.
JCY International Bhd, a hard disk drive components maker, also plans to sell shares, according to a draft prospectus filed with the Securities Commission on Dec 9.
PNB, which manages more than RM100bil of assets, has completed the merger of its three property companies – Island & Peninsular Bhd (I&P), Pelangi Bhd and Petaling Garden Bhd – after taking them private, Hamad Kama Piah said.
The asset manager bought I&P for RM670.5mil and Petaling Garden for RM477mil in 2007. It took over Pelangi two years earlier.
On the Government’s push to trim stakes in state-linked companies to bolster liquidity, Hamad Kama Piah said: “You can sell, but returns must be good for the unit holders.”
PNB “hopes” for the Malaysian stock market to do better next year as the Government pushed through efforts to revive the economy, he said.
The asset manager was studying ways to develop land surrounding two stadiums in the nation’s capital, he said without elaborating. — Bloomberg
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