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MAY 12, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 18 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK


Illustration by Manodh Premaratne

BUSINESS BUZZ
The Nationalist Card Again

Maybe it's time to show a little sympathy toward Singapore Telecom. The state-controlled telephone company lost out in the bidding for Cable & Wireless HKT, Hong Kong's dominant telecommunications company, to Richard Li of Pacific Century CyberWorks who had home-town and possibly Beijing support. Now SingTel's bid for a stake in Malaysia's Time Telecom has hit a similar snag. "At the highest echelons of government there is strong opposition to a foreigner moving in," says a well-placed Kuala Lumpur source. "There is word from the top that a Malaysian solution would be preferred."

Time and its subsidiary Time dotCom hold government licenses to provide voice and data services over wireless and fixed lines until 2018, helping the nearly bankrupt company look more attractive than it might first appear. SingTel is seeking to improve its regional reach with a 20% stake in Time dotCom, which would allow it to use Time's fiber-optic network throughout the peninsula. Talk in Kuala Lumpur of "a nationalist solution" has prompted Time's many creditors to form a strong lobby under the leadership of Sapura, a local telephone company that has not been fully paid for the cellular firm it sold to Time dotCom. Sapura's offer for 40% of Time has not gone over well, in spite of the fact that it has said it will give the shares to all the other creditors if the deal goes through. Halim Saad, chief of the Renong Group, which owns Time, calls the Sapura offer too low and says it would disastrously reduce the value of important national assets. Besides, if Time goes to Sapura, Renong would lose control of Time dotCom. When asked in parliament about the Time sale Deputy Finance Minister Shafie Mohamed Salleh said that the government would not interfere. But he added that it would still consider this an "issue of nationalism." Such questions are always present in Malaysia, but are more pressing now that the General Assembly sessions of the dominant United Malays National Organization are about to begin. It is traditionally the time for Malay drums to be beaten - not a good time for SingTel.

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