Thai tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi is again on the acquisition trail in southeast Asia, talking with Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and its insurance arm about buying their stakes in United Engineers, one of Singapore’s oldest construction companies.
OCBC, Singapore’s second-largest bank by assets, said it and Great Eastern Holdings, its insurance unit, had agreed to hold exclusive talks with Mr Charoen’s TCC Top Enterprise for the next six weeks about an acquisition of UE and WBL, another Singapore engineering group that UE bought last year for S$725m including debt.
For OCBC, any sale would help boost its capital base as it funds a $5bn takeover of Hong Kong’s Wing Hang bank, analysts said. UE’s market capitalisation was $1.8bn yesterday.
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