Shanghai Daily: Business - shanghaidaily.com
PT Medco Energi Internasional, Indonesia's largest publicly traded oil producer, plans to raise US$100 million from selling a stake in its overseas unit to selected investors before an initial public offering. Medco will invite five private-equity firms to buy shares at the end of January, President Director Hilmi Panigoro told Bloomberg News. The pricing of the IPO, which is postponed to the fourth quarter of next year from the first, will determine the size of the stakes that the investors will get, he said. "We want to be able to do some work first to increase the valuations of the global unit before the IPO," Panigoro said in the interview in Jakarta. UBS AG is helping to sell the stakes to equity firms and the public. Indonesian oil companies are expanding outside southeast Asia's biggest crude producer to boost reserves as the country's most accessible deposits become depleted. Overseas fields will help Medco meet its target of expanding output by 15 percent a