Deals
Country With 2,000 Banks Eyes Foreign Firms for More Mergers
- Foreign lenders have an opportunity to buy bank assets cheaply
- Indonesia’s deposit insurance chief Ichsan speaks in interview
This article is for subscribers only.
Indonesia has almost 2,000 banks and a currency that’s plunged 11 percent since January, a combination overburdened regulators hope will prove irresistible to foreign acquirers.
The country’s lenders are in much better shape than during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, and have stood up well to the weakening of the rupiah this year, said Fauzi Ichsan, chief executive officer of the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corp., known as LPS. “Consolidation will be good and with a weakening rupiah, it would be cheaper for global investors to buy our banks,” Ichsan said in an interview last week.