HONG KONG, Jan 28: The French Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) is to sweep up the core of the defunct Peregrine empire, buying for an undisclosed sum its Hong Kong, China and Taiwan operations.The move follows BNP's takeover in late 1996 of PrimeEast Capital Group, a Singapore-based investment house with strong contacts in the major Southeast Asian countries. Quoting a source close to PrimeEast, the Singapore daily Business Times said Wednesday the deal had been agreed.
``Homegrown Financial group BNP PrimeEast, together with its major shareholder Banque Nationale de Paris, has bought the Greater China operations of Peregrine ... for an undisclosed sum,'' the paper said, citing a source close to PrimeEast.
Didier Balme, BNP's director general for Hong Kong, China and Macau, said: ``Things are moving ahead, but it is not complete.'' According to a source close to the negotiations, the liquidator for Peregrine Investments Holdings Ltd, David Hague, of Price Waterhouse, called Tuesday for all sides to saynothing about the talks until Monday, when Asia returns to work after the long Lunar New Year holidays. The BNP will then make an announcement.
Peregrine, once Asia's largest independent investment bank, filed for liquidation on January 12, brought down by its exposure to a troubled Indonesia.
The final hurdle for the French bank appears to be the efforts by some former Peregrine leaders to agree a deal for the major Spanish bank Banco Santander to take the whole of Peregrine International Securities Limited (PISL), the holding which covers the brokerage activities for Asia.
According to a source close to Peregrine, the head of PISL Andrew Jamieson was in Madrid at the start of the week, meeting heads of Banco Santander.
The slice of PISL in which the BNP is most interested includes only 170 of the some 500 staff in the firm, but ``75 per cent of its value,'' one of the bank's veterans said.
The major shareholder is Francis Leung, director general and co-founder of the Peregrine group, the mancredited with introducing major Chinese state-owned firms into the international capital market through the Hong Kong bourse.
The bank veteran, who worked at Peregrine after it was founded in 1988 by Leungand Philip Tose, said the ``greater China'' slice of Peregrine operations ideally complemented BNP-PrimeEast. The Hong Kong and China divisions were the core of the Peregrine group.
They fit together well geographically, since PrimeEast has a presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. If the deal is confirmed on Monday, the French bank, which already has a strong commercial presence in Asia, and in China in particular, will emerge as the principle beneficiary of the fall of Peregrine.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
