UPDATE 1-KKR, MBK bid for Samsung Group asset - sources
* Samsung providing 5 yr guarantees on revenue-sourceBy Stephen Aldred and Ju-min ParkHONG KONG/SEOUL, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Global private equity
fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co LP and Asian buyout
fund MBK Partners are among bidders for a majority stake in
Samsung Group’s procurement arm iMarketKorea Inc
, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.Samsung Group said in August that it planned to sell a
combined 58.7 percent stake in the non-core business, held by
nine of its affiliates, in a rare divestment by the South Korean
conglomerate. The bids went in on Friday.Goldman Sachs Group Inc has been hired to advise on
the sale of the stake, which is valued at 372 billion won ($326
million) based on Tuesday’s closing share price of 17,650 won.An official for South Korean shopping mall operator
Interpark Corp also confirmed it is heading a
consortium which placed a bid.The Interpark group contains private equity fund H&Q, the
sources said.An external spokeswoman for KKR could not offer an immediate
comment, while MBK could not immediately be reached for comment.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.The sources declined to be identified as the discussions
were private.The size of the stake could be smaller, as Samsung earlier
said it might maintain an interest in Imarketkorea if buyers
request it. That interest could be up to 10 percent, one of the
sources said.Samsung set up Imarketkorea in 2000 to provide goods and
maintenance services for business clients.The conglomerate is providing five-year guarantees to
prospective buyers, to ensure two trillion won of revenue
annually through Imarketkorea, one of the sources said.
UPDATE 1-Bank of Ireland divests 5 bln euros of loans
Bank of Ireland, the only domestic lender to avoid falling
into state control, said it had raised 4.54 billion euros from
the sale of the loan books, a higher price than expected,
meaning there was no impact on its core tier one ratio.Bank of Ireland had a pro forma core tier one ratio, a key
measure of financial strength, of 15.4 percent at the end of
June.Ireland’s banks need to shrink their loan books to reduce
their dependence on emergency funding from the European Central
Bank and the Irish central bank, which at the end of September
stood at 153.6 billion euros.Bank of Ireland needs to dispose of another 5 billion euros
worth of loans by the end of 2013, and it said it was making
good progress.It said it was in advanced talks with potential purchasers
of project finance loans.The loans already sold include a U.S. commercial real
estate portfolio valued at $1.13 billion, some 1.33 billion
pounds of UK commercial property loans sold to Kennedy Wilson
and institutional partners for 1.07 billion pounds, and 1.23
billion pounds of British residential mortgages sold to a unit
of Britain’s Nationwide Building Society for 1.13 billion
pounds.Bank of Ireland also sold a portfolio of project finance
loans with total commitments of 670 million euros to GE Energy
Financial Services . The loans relate to a portfolio of
energy assets across North America, the UK, continental Europe
and the Middle East.The group also accepted repayment of some 700 million euros
of loans at or close to par in its UK corporate banking
division.
WSJ Europe disputes circulation scam report
* WSJ Europe parent News Corp embroiled in ethics scandalOct 12 (Reuters) - The publisher of the Wall Street Journal
Europe was forced to resign over a scam used by the paper to
boost its circulation, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported,
citing documents and e-mails it said it had obtained.The Journal responded by saying the report on Wednesday was
“replete with untruths and malign interpretations”.WSJ Europe parent Dow Jones had said the previous day that
Andrew Langhoff had quit over ethical issues raised by the
paper’s commercial relationship with Dutch consulting firm
Executive Learning Partnership (ELP).It did not disclose the nature of the relationship.Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp parent of Dow Jones, has been
fighting accusations of ethical missteps related to phone
hacking at its now defunct News of the World newspaper in
London.Much of the reporting on the phone-hacking scandal has been
led by the Guardian.On Wednesday, it reported that the WSJ Europe had been
channeling money through European companies to secretly buy
thousands of copies of its own paper for as little as 5 cents
per copy.This had the effect of inflating its circulation and
misleading advertisers about the Journal’s true circulation,
the Guardian said.Both the Guardian and WSJ Europe said the UK Audit Bureau
of Circulation had signed off on the program.The partnership also involved a contract in which the
Journal promised to publish articles that promoted ELP’s
activities, the Guardian said.”The Guardian’s inflammatory characterization of WSJE’s
former ELP circulation program is replete with untruths and
malign interpretations,” the Journal said in an e-mailed
statement. “Andrew Langhoff resigned because of a perceived
breach of editorial integrity, not because of circulation
programs, whose copies were certified by the ABC UK.”The Guardian said that a former employee, who was not
identified, was a whistleblower who helped to reveal the
circulation-boosting effort.The whistleblower’s position was made redundant in January
after he raised concerns about the circulation
circulation-boosing effort, the Guardian said.”In fact, that employee was first investigated by the
company because of concerns around his business dealings,” the
Journal said in its statement.”REPORTERS PRESSURED”The Guardian said former Dow Jones Chief Executive Les
Hinton, a close ally of Murdoch, had been aware of the
circulation effort. A Dow Jones spokeswoman declined to comment
on Hinton’s involvement.In an article on its website on Tuesday, the Journal said
an internal investigation had found that Langhoff had
personally pressured two reporters into writing articles
featuring ELP.The agreement between the paper’s circulation department
and the Dutch firm, now expired, was not disclosed to readers
of the articles, the Journal said in a note attached to the
articles on its website.ELP did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.”There is — and should be — an inviolable boundary
between our commercial relationships and the content we
produce,” Langhoff said in an internal memo on Tuesday.”The perception that this boundary was crossed via a broad
agreement between the WSJE Circulation department and a company
called Executive Learning Partnership has been of great concern
to me,” he said.The phone-hacking allegations, which have led to a number
of arrests, have prompted critics to demand the resignation of
Murdoch and other executives, including his son James.News Corp has fiercely defended Murdoch and other directors
saying it “vehemently disagrees” with critics of the company’s
practices.Dow Jones competes with Thomson Reuters Corp.
