Azman Hashim does not rule out buying ANZ’s AMMB stake
THE STAR
KUALA LUMPUR: After months of speculation, AMMB Holdings Bhd’s second largest shareholder Tan Sri Azman Hashim has come out to say that he does not discount the possibility of buying Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd’s (ANZ) stake in AMMB.
“I guess so if ANZ is selling, then one of the options will be that (about him buying the stake),” he said on the sidelines of the 20th Malaysian Banking Summit yesterday in Kuala Lumpur.
Azman, who is the chairman of AMMB, however, said he could not comment on ANZ’s intentions to sell its 23.8% stake in the banking group.
Azman has an indirect stake of 12.97% in AMMB.
This is through his investment holding company, AmCorp Group Bhd.
In April, StarBiz had reported that Azman could possibly return to the helm of AMMB as several foreign funds, including United States-based equity fund TPG Newbridge, were courting him with the view of buying up ANZ’s block of shares.
Banking sources said that Azman is committed to staying with AMMB for the longer term and would like to have a partner he is comfortable with in the bank.
Speculation that ANZ was seeking to exit from AMMB has been circulating for a while now.
And the clearest signal of this intention came in early May after ANZ provided A$260mil (RM773.07mil) as impairment losses on its investment in AMMB in its latest result.
According to ANZ’s 2015 annual report, the value of its stake in AMMB was booked at A$1.424bil (RM4.23bil).
With the impairment, the value is now estimated at A$1.16bil (RM3.46bil), which is still above the market value of its 23.8% stake in AMMB based on yesterday’s closing price.
Investment bankers said that investments are written down closer to the market price when the asset is up for sale.
It’s been reported that ANZ has been under increasing pressure from its shareholders to improve returns from its underperforming Asian assets.
ANZ bought into AMMB in 2006 in two tranches, averaging RM3.63 a share or RM2.58bil, which translated into a price-to-book (P/B) of 1.96 times, which was in line with the average valuation of 1.91 times P/B of banking mergers at that time.
AMMB, which is the sixth largest banking group by assets, closed 18 sen down at RM4.90, with 4.23 million shares being traded.
