Malaysia's Petronas Makes Higher Offer to Buy Out MISC

Malaysia's state owned oil and gas firm Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) raised the offer price to take over shipping firm MISC Bhd in a deal valued at 9.2 billion ringgit ($3 billion).

The revised offer of 5.50 ringgit per share comes after MISC's other major shareholder, the Employees Provident Fund found the original bid of 5.30 per share to be unattractive.

Petronas did not disclose reasons behind the revised offer on Friday, which is 0.73 percent or four sen higher than MISC's share close of 5.46 ringgit per share.

Some equity analysts have said MISC could fetch a higher value in view of a better outlook ahead after selling off its loss-making liner business.

RHB Investment Bank pegged a value of 6.03 ringgit per share on MISC and asked shareholders to reject the initial cash offer.

Petronas holds a 62.67 percent equity stake in MISC and still needs to acquire more to reach 90 percent for the deal to go through.

The Employee Providend Fund is the second largest shareholder with a 9.54 percent stake followed by another government-linked fund Permodalan Nasional Bhd with a 9.44 percent stake.

($1 = 3.0800 Malaysian ringgit)

--Reporting By Yantoultra Ngui; Editing by Niluksi Koswanage (C) Reuters 2013.