RHB Capital buy Bank Mestika

RHB Capital Bhd., Malaysia' s fourth-biggest banking group, agreed to buy control of Indonesian
lender PT Bank Mestika Dharma for 3.12 trillion rupiah. Throughout this transactions , adding 50 branches in Indonesia.
RHB Capital, based in Kuala Lumpur, will buy 80 percent shares PT Bank Mestika and has an option to purchase an additional 9 percent, according to a statement today. PT Bank
Mestika is based in Medan, Indonesia' s third-largest city.
RHB Capital joins bigger rival Malayan Banking Bhd. in investing in Indonesia, where nine interest rate reductions have begun to revive the economy. RHB Capital has branches in
Thailand, Brunei and Singapore, and last year bought a 49 percent stake in Vietnam Securities Corp.
Malayan Banking, last year bought PT Bank Internasional Indonesia, as overseas banks race
to tap the rising spending power of the country' s 235 million people. CIMB Group Holdings Bhd., Malaysia's second biggest lender, controls Jakarta-listed bank CIMB Niaga, formed in a
2008 merger of PT Bank CIMB Niaga and PT Bank Lippo.
RHB will fund the acquisition through a 1.3 billion ringgit rights offer slated for the first quarter of 2010. The company plans to issue 361 million new shares at 3.60 ringgit each, which is a 22 percent discount to the stock' s last traded price of 4.60 ringgit on Oct. 16, before RHB's shares
were suspended for this announcement.
There are also plan to list Bank Mestika on the Jakarta stock exchange before the acquisition is completed by the end of the first-quarter of 2010.
RHB is controlled by Malaysia' s largest pension fund, the Employees Provident Fund. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC also has a stake in the lender.
Bank Mestika posted a profit of 169.8 billion rupiah for 2008 and had a capital adequacy ratio of 26.2 percent at the end of last year, according to the statement. The Medan-based bank
has 50 branches and six so-called cash offices across Indonesia.