Vallar drills into Indonesia with $3bn coal deal

(REX FEATURES)

The cash shell led by the financier Nat Rothschild is to team up with Indonesia's powerful Bakrie family to create a London-listed coal mining group.

The complex deal will bring together interests in three companies – Vallar, Bumi Resources and Berau Coal Energy, the latter two being Indonesia's largest and fifth-largest coal producers respectively.

Vallar will spend $3bn (£1.9bn) in cash and new shares to buy three-quarters of Berau and a quarter of Bumi. Given its stake in the latter, this will leave the Bakrie Group – the firm run by the family of the Indonesian politician and businessman Aburizal Bakrie – with 43 per cent of Vallar, which will be renamed Bumi Plc to reflect the deals. The remainder will be owned by Vallar's existing shareholders, its management and founders, and by Berau's shareholder Recapital.

The Bakrie Group will have management control with the right to nominate the chairman, chief executive and chief financial officer of the new company.

Indra Bakrie, the proposed chairman of the enlarged company, said the deal will "create an Indonesian global mining champion and the only major Indonesian company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange". Mr Rothschild is the proposed co-chairman, while Ari Hudaya is the proposed chief executive of the new group.