CIMB seeks maximum BoC stake

CONFIDENCE: (from left) CIMB Niaga chief executive officer Arwin Rashid, Nazir and group chief financial officer Kenny Kim facing investors at the annual meeting yesterday — Pic: SHIDDIEQIIN ZON

KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Group Holdings Bhd will seek to obtain the maximum stake allowed under Filipino laws — up to a 60% stake in San Miguel Corp’s Bank of Commerce (BoC).

Group chief executive Datuk Seri Nazir Razak yesterday expressed confidence the deal for San Miguel’s unlisted banking subsidiary would be sealed as “soon as possible”.

“Philippines is the second largest market in terms of population and given the reading of its economy, it makes a good case to take up the opportunity.”

CIMB Group had only last week announced its acquisition of some Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) assets in the Asia Pacific, closely realising its presence to be in every market within Asia.

Nazir also stated CIMB Group had no need to raise further capital for both BoC and RBS asset buys.

“We have calculated our capital requirements. The levels are comfortable and suffi cient, even after paying about 40% of last year’s earning as dividends.”

Asked about the timing of these purchases, he said: “In this case, to be fair, we were slightly delayed due to RBS’ deliberations.”

Stating that the group is eyeing the South Korea market and plans to further expand into Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, he said CIMB Group will be applying for new licenses in Laos, while the application for Vietnam submitted two years ago is still pending approval.

“We are currently engaging regulators to process the applications for new licences in stockbroking and corporate finance since RBS is not selling their Korean platform to us.”

He also said CIMB Group is buying into businesses from RBS in Mumbai, India, with the latest batch of 300 staff there having come on board.

With the RBS units, Nazir said CIMB Group would have new presence in both Taiwan and Australia, as well substantially enlarged operations in Hong Kong, India, China plus exposure in London and New York.

On the corporate investment banking division, Nazir clarifi ed the earnings there were not the actual representation of its performance as it had set aggressive growth targets.

“They did very well in 2011 but the problem is, they did incredibly well in 2010.”