From what has been revealed publicly, three government-linked funds and agencies, namely KWAP, EPF and Danaharta, had taken up RM1.437 billion or 76.5% of the RM1.88 billion Time dotCom IPO issue, comprising:
Amount of shares
Price paid
EPF -
81.6 million
RM269.28m
KWAP - 273.86 million RM903.74m
Danaharta - 80.5 million RM264.16m
After two weeks of its public listing, Time dotCom ended on Friday’s trading at RM2.22 per share, i.e. RM1.08 or 32.7 per cent below its IPO price of RM3.30. This would mean that KWAP, EPF and Danaharta has suffered a combined loss of RM470 million from their bailout of the Time dotCom IPO.
However, the total commitment of government-linked funds and agencies in the bailout of the Time dotCom IPO could be higher than RM1.437 billion or 76.5% of the RM1.88 billion IPO. In fact, it could even go as high as 90 to 95 per cent if identities of all those who bought the 25% subscribed portion and 75% unsubscribed portion of the IPO are made public.
Even if the total commitment of government-linked funds and agencies in the Time dotCom IPO is as high as 90 - 95 per cent, this is not the whole story of government commitment in the bailout of Time dotCom and Time Engineering, as the government through Khazanah had pumped RM2.1 billion into Time dotCom.
Tan Sri Halim Saad has been credited as being instrumental in clearing the RM5 billion debts of Time Engineering, but it would appear that some 80 per cent of these debts had been cleared by using the Malaysian taxpayers’ money.
For this reason, Daim should present a Ministerial statement in Parliament on Tuesday on the bailout by EPF, KWAP and all other government-linked funds and agencies in the RM1.88 billion Time dotCom IPO, the RM5 billion Time Engineering debts, Renong and Halim Saad’s RM25 billion debts.
(25/3/2001)