KARACHI (Reuters) – AsiaPak Investments, a private investment firm with operational assets in Pakistan and Hong Kong, and Middle Eastern oil and gas company Montage Oil have bid for a 75.01% stake in Lotte Chemical Pakistan, per a notice filed by the manager to the offer with the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Thursday.
“The due diligence and price discovery for a share price agreement is yet to happen,” Shahid Ali Habib, CEO of Arif Habib Ltd, the manager to the offer, told Reuters.
Lotte Chemical Corp, the Korean parent company, had put up the Pakistani unit for sale, citing a mismatch with its long-term vision.
But two previous deals for the company, which currently has a market capitalization of 32.1 billion rupees (about $115 million), have fallen through.
First, Pakistan-based petrochemical firm Novatex pulled its offer to buy the 75% stake in 2023 and last year a unit of conglomerate Lucky Core Industries ended its deal to buy the stake for about 192.4 billion won ($132.85 million). ($1 = 1,448.3000 won) ($1 = 279.2500 Pakistani rupees)
(Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Savio D’Souza)
