Bank Rakyat Indonesia mulls acquiring Bank Agroniaga’s stake

Bank Rakyat is eyeing more than 50% stake 3 years after its last acquisition.

PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia plans to buy a stake in PT Bank Agroniaga, Bank Rakyat’s President Director Sofyan Basir told reporters in Jakarta on Feb. 20.

Bank Rakyat prefers a stake of "above 50 percent" in Bank Agroniaga, even though the talks with Bank Agroniaga are still in early stages, Basir said in a report in Business Week.

Such a purchase would be Bank Rakyat’s first acquisition in almost three years after it bought a majority stake in PT Bank Jasa Arta in late 2007. Bank Rakyat, which has a market capitalisation of 92 trillion rupiah ($9.8 billion), turned Bank Jasa into a stand-alone Islamic bank early last year.