PT Bank Negara Indonesia Tbk is preparing to aanwijzing securities company for rights issue underwriters tender.

BNI's Chief Financial Officer Yap Tjay Soen says the company need to prepare rights issue to get a good timing. "However, the appointment is still subject to approval from House of Representatives [upon the rights issue plan]," he said yesterday.

He revealed that the funds obtained from the rights issue will be used to support the capitalization of the company.

BNI plans to issue 3.37 billion new shares to increase public ownership in the company up to 40% this year. The issuance of 3.37 billion shares is equal to 16% of ownership, leaving the state lender's outstanding shares reaching to 18.65 billion shares, of which government owns 11.289 billion shares and the public owns the rest 7.459 billion shares.

The total is based on assumption that the government does not exercise its rights in the rights issue. The bank's management also proposes to release 664 million shares through employee management stock option plan (EMSOP) program.