Troubled miner Bumi to revamp name and board

JOHANNESBURG: Indonesia-focused miner Bumi Plc will announce plans for a smaller board and a new company name as it seeks to break with two years of damaging battles between investors, a source familiar with the matter said.

Bumi’s board would make the announcements in documents to be sent out to shareholders this week and would also separately announce a new head for its key, majorityowned Indonesian asset, Berau Coal, the source said.

Bumi’s co-founders, financier Nat Rothschild and Indonesia’s influential Bakrie family, are locked in a bitter battle over plans for the future of a coal miner, which has become emblematic of minority investor troubles with foreign resource firms listed in London.

Retaining and tightly managing Berau Coal, in which Bumi owns 85%, is critical to the plans of the current board, under newly appointed chief executive Nick von Schirnding, to rebuild the company without the founding Bakrie family. Bumi Plc owns only 29% of its other main operating asset, Bumi Resources.

The source said Eko Budianto, operations director at Berau, would take the helm there, replacing Indonesian investor and Bumi shareholder Rosan Roeslani. Former Anglo American Coal boss Tony Redman would be an adviser to the group, the source said.

“It is about (the current management) asserting control,” the source said, adding that the smaller board would reflect the exit of the Bakrie family. The new name is still being finalised.

Roeslani, a major shareholder in Bumi, resigned from Bumi’s board last month after UK regulators ruled he had acted “in concert” with the Bakries. The regulators restricted their voting rights and ordered them to sell down their holding.

The Bakries and Rothschild got together in 2010 to bring promising Indonesian assets to London, but the relationship quickly soured. The venture has instead been marked by crumbling shares – not helped by falling coal prices – an investigation into financial wrongdoing and investor battles.

The Bakries said last year they planned to unwind the company, drawing a line under their London venture and taking back the assets they and partners such as Roeslani brought in. —