PAKISTAN PUTS OFF STAKE SALE IN LARGEST ENERGY FIRM OGDCL – WSJ
Nov 10 (Reuters) – The Pakistan government has indefinitely postponed the sale of a stake in the country’s largest energy firm, Oil and Gas Development Co Ltd OGDC.KA, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The newspaper said Pakistani officials cited falling global oil prices as the reason for the postponement of the deal on the London and Karachi stock exchanges, but there was also a poor response to the offer, the paper quoted analysts as saying.
At the close of trading on Friday, bids had come in for just 52 per cent of the energy firm’s shares on sale, The Wall Street Journal quoted Pakistan’s Privatisation Minister Mohammad Zubair as saying.
Reuters has previously reported that the government was seeking to sell a 7.5 percent stake in OGDCL to raise around $815 million. The deal was slated to be the largest offering from a local company in almost eight years.(Full Story)
Bank of America Merrill Lynch BAC.N, Citigroup C.N, and Pakistani broker KASB SecuritiesKASBSL.KA were handling the share sale, according to a term sheet of the deal seen by Reuters.
Pakistani officials were not immediately available to comment on the report.
The banks involved in the deal were also not immediately available for comment.
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