A top shareholder in Daewoo Shipbuilding
and Marine Engineering Co Ltd (042660.KS) said on Sunday it had
withdrawn from talks to have Goldman Sachs (GS.N) manage the
sale of the South Korean shipbuilder.
State-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) and other banks want
to sell their 50.4 percent stake in the world's third-largest
shipbuilder and KDB picked the Wall Street bank in April to
handle the deal.
"We had been in talks with Goldman, a preferred negotiator,
to manage the deal," a KDB spokesman said by telephone. "But
Goldman said it could not accept our requests, so the talks
ended."
He declined to give any details on those requests. Goldman
Sachs declined to comment.
The sale is expected to be the country's biggest M&A
transaction this year, fetching more than $4 billion, based on
the stake's market value of 4.15 trillion won ($4 billion).
Local media reported, without citing sources, that the KDB
had asked Goldman Sachs to address a potential conflict of
interest because the U.S. bank had invested in a Chinese
shipbuilder. The shipbuilding company was not identified.
Ernst & Young (ERNY.UL) has been selected as the accounting
adviser and South Korean law firm Lee & Ko as legal adviser.
The deal has drawn interest from a number of domestic
companies, including steel giant POSCO (005490.KS) and South
Korean business group Hanwha.
Goldman Sachs topped South Korea's M&A arrangers' league
table in 2007, when it managed a sale of shares in broadband
provider hanarotelecom (033630.KQ) shares by a consortium led
by American International Group to SK Telecom (017670.KS).
($1=1037.0 Won)
(Reporting by Cheon Jong-woo and Kim Yeon-hee; Editing by
Alan Raybould)
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