PETALING JAYA: Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is reportedly planning to dispose of its stake in its Malaysian operations for as much as US$1bil (RM4.19bil). According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Singapore-listed insurer had already engaged a Malaysian bank to discuss the potential deal. The WSJ said both Prudential and Tokio Marine planned to sell close to a third of the shares in their Malaysian units. Last June, the Malaysian central bank gave insurers until June 2018 to meet its requirement that foreign ownership should not exceed 70%. Various reports said potential buyers of stakes that would be disposed of by foreign insurers would be local institutional funds such as the Employees Provident Fund and Permodalan Nasional Bhd.

Source: The Star September 20, 2017 00:11 UTC