KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 8 (Bernama) -- The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) hopes to name RHB Capital Bhd's foreign strategic partner by the first quarter of next year, EPF's chief executive officer, Datuk Azlan Zainol said today.

The state pension fund has 82 percent stake in RHB Capital.

"It has to pare down its stake to 35 percent to keep the listing status," Azlan said at a media briefing on the reorganisation of RHB Capital here today.

EPF has been given one year from June 2007 to identify a partner and it has appointed international investment bank, Goldman Sachs, to do the task.

"There have been a lot of enquiries, mostly foreign parties. So, we hope to make an announcement within the next six months from now or maybe in the first quarter of next year if not earlier," said Azlan, who is also director of RHB Capital.

He said there could be more than one strategic partner to enable the EPF to remain as the single largest shareholder in RHB Capital.

"There have been interests from the Middle East and huge financial houses from Europe. So, we are looking at all these," Azlan said, adding that Goldman Sachs would shortlist the interested parties before it started discussions.

He said both EPF and interested parties needed to get Bank Negara Malaysia's (BNM) approval to start discussion or negotiation on the share sale.

Azlan, however, said Kuwait Finance House (KFH) was not one of the foreign parties interest to become RHB Capital's strategic partner.

Asked if KFH was still keen on buying up to 30 branches of the banking group, he said: "I hope so because they wanted to buy."

Quoting a news report, he said, KFH has not got BNM's approval for the purpose, "so, we are waiting for them to come back to us."

The group currently has about 200 branches nationwide.

On the price for the stake, he said it would be more than RM4.80 it had paid to acquire the RHB Capital shares.

RHB Capital shares fell five sen to close at RM6.15 today.

Source -  BERNAMA