KUALA LUMPUR: Khazanah Nasional Bhd will wait for the outcome of a merger talk between Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd and Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB) before deciding what to do with its stake in the Islamic bank.

Khazanah owns a 30% stake in Bank Muamalat, an asset the state investment fund has always considered a non-core holding.

“We have a policy that if it is a non-core holding, we don’t really need to hold it. But we are not in a rush to sell either,” Khazanah managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar said on the sidelines of Khazanah’s Megatrends Forum 2015.

“It has to be at the right price, right configuration and so on,” he added.

Last week, Bank Negara gave its nod to MBSB and Bank Muamalat to begin merger talks, a move that could pave the way for the creation of the country’s biggest standalone Islamic Bank.

Azman said the negotiations for the potential merger would be held between MBSB and DRB-Hicom Bhd, which owns 70% of Bank Muamalat.

“We have seen some progress in Bank Muamalat, but really, our partners DRB-Hicom and MBSB, which is owned by the Employees Provident Fund, are taking the lead,” Azman said. “Khazanah will make a decision based on whatever they decide,” he said.

Assuming the merger talks go through, the combined asset size of the two lenders is estimated to be RM60bil.

The assets combined is higher than BIMB Holdings Bhd’s asset size of RM54bil as at end-March. BIMB is the holding company of Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd.

Both MBSB and DRB-Hicom said last week that the central bank required the merger negotiations to be finalised within three months from the date of the approval.

This banking merger deal comes about nine months after a proposed three-way merger deal between MBSB, CIMB Group Holdings Bhd and RHB Capital Bhd was called off in January.

– The Star