Panin Group sees no Bank Panin sale this year

Panin Group does not expect to sell its controlling 46 per cent stake in Bank Pan Indonesia this year due anticipated strong growth.

A move last week by southeast Asia's top lender DBS Group for fellow Indonesian lender Bank Danamon raised talk that Panin could be next in line for a deal, lifting Panin's shares 6 per cent since the bid emerged.

“We haven't thought of selling the bank this year. The growth is still good, capital is strong too,” Panin Group founder Mu'min Ali Gunawan told Reuters today.

The controlling stake in Bank Panin, Indonesia's seventh- largest lender, last year drew interest from European and Asia-Pacific banks, an executive told Reuters in an interview a year ago.

Bids for Bank Panin appear to have not been high enough to justify further talks for a bank that Gunawan said had a capital adequacy ratio of 17 per cent, well above the level required and giving it lending firepower in a G20 economy seen growing at over 6 per cent again this year.

“We studied (a sale) last year, in case someday we wanted to sell it at a certain price,” Gunawan said. “We only wanted to check and see the price.”

Gunawan said he was not impressed by the DBS offer for Danamon, which was made at a 52 per cent premium to the previous stock price or equivalent to around 2.6 times book value, also implying he saw bids for Panin as having been too low.

“Danamon's price is considerably too cheap,” Gunawan said.

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