Central Bank Of Bangladesh To Send Tender Documents On Sale Of Oriental Shares

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) - The majority of shares in a troubled Bangladesh Bank will go up for sale later this week. The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country's central bank, is likely to send tender documents on the sale of a nearly 60 percent share of troubled Oriental Bank Limited to six potential buyers by the end of this week, official says in the capital, Dhaka.

A draft bidding document has already been prepared by concerned department of the central bank and the document is now lying with legal experts of the BB for vetting, they add.

"We are hopeful about sending the bidding documents to the investors by the end of this week," a BB senior official told AHN in Dhaka, adding that the central bank would give the investors three weeks time to submit their tender documents from the date of receiving bidding papers.

The central bank will form a high-powered committee comprising experts from different organizations to evaluate the tender documents after receiving them from the interested parties.

The committee will recommend one investor after examination of the entire bidding document on purchase of $58.30 million (BDT 4.0 billion) worth of shares of the Shariah-based private commercial bank.

The six investors - three foreign and three local - have already completed their due diligence to know overall position of the bank.

The local parties are BRAC Bank Limited, Summit Industrial & Mercantile Corporation (Pvt.) Limited and Domestic Investors Consortium, a forum comprising local commercial banks and non-banking financial institutions.

The foreign interested companies are the United Kingdom-based East Invest Private Equity Limited, ICB Financial Group Holdings of Switzerland and Hatton National Bank of Sri Lanka.

The Oriental Bank that suffered a severe financial crisis was taken over by the BB on June 19, 2006 to protect the depositors' interest. The central bank of Bangladesh appointed an administrator to run the bank temporarily.