Central Bank: No Yes Yet for Danamon-DBS Deal

VIVAnews - Bank Indonesia has not yet approved the merger plan of Bank Danamon and the DBS Group as the deal was not included in the banks’ business plan (RBB). 

“The business plans of both banks did not mention anything about [merger].  We have asked the banks of whether or not there was any corporate action and it turns out that no such action ever happened,” said Director of BI’s Banking Monitoring, Endang Kusulanjari, in Jakarta, on Wednesday. 

For the time being, the central bank cannot say yes to the merger plan before both banks present the business plans. 

“Yes, we can’t give nod to the plan at the moment except any strategic plan is introduced,” he said. 

According to Endang, although merger or acquisition plan is not attached in the business plans, the central bank will not issue sanction just yet. Both banks are still given the opportunity to review the merger or acquisition plan and add the plan up to the business plans. 

“They still have rooms for review,” he said. 

The banking authority has summoned DBS and Danamon to further question their future plans. 

To date, the DBS Group Holdings Ltd has sealed a conditional share purchase agreement with the Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte Ltd (FFH) to take over 100% of FFH’s shares in the Asia Financial Indonesia Pte Ltd (AFI). Asia Financial Indonesia owns 67.37% of PT Bank Danamon Indonesia Tbk’s shares.  The transaction value of the takeover is Rp45.2 trillion or equal to Sin$6.2 billion.