Domestic firms getting an edge in stake sales

A Sinopec spokesman did not answer three phone calls to his office seeking comment.

China Huarong Asset, the nation's biggest bad-loan manager, also made it tough for outsiders when it sold a 21 percent stake for $2.4 billion.

At a late stage in negotiations, the State-owned firm found multiple Chinese companies to buy stakes, including Fosun International Ltd, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. That ended up diluting the stakes available to foreign buyers who had expressed interest at an earlier stage, according to the person.

Warburg Pincus paid about $700 million in its largest ever investment in the country and is likely to get a board seat, that person and a second person familiar with the matter said. It came after former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, 53, now Warburg's president, flew to China to meet Huarong executives, according to the second person.

Malaysia's state investment company Khazanah Nasional Bhd and Goldman Sachs bought far smaller stakes.

Huarong said in an e-mailed statement it used market mechanisms to determine its value, selecting the final investors from a group of more than 80 domestic and overseas institutions after multiple bidding rounds. The Beijing-based asset manager is strictly following plans approved by the State Council, it said.

Lai Xiaomin, Huarong's chairman, discussed cooperation opportunities with Geithner during a Feb 14 visit by the former US official, according to the statement. Li Mingxia, a spokeswoman for Warburg Pincus, declined to comment.

The focus on finding Chinese investors marks an about-face from the last round of reforms, when foreign lenders invested $33 billion to recapitalize local banks recovering from years of State-directed lending. Some of the overseas investors were later criticized in China after selling their stakes as they sought to repair balance sheets during the financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs has reaped about $12 billion in sales proceeds and dividends from its $2.58 billion investment in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, Macquarie Group Ltd estimates.

Bank of America Corp received at least $15 billion on that basis from its China Construction Bank Corp investment, according to Bloomberg calculations from regulatory filings.

"A lot of Chinese corporates no longer need the stamp of approval from sophisticated foreign firms to validate their story," said Brian Gu, co-head of China investment banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co "The need to attract overseas investors now has reduced."

Chinese financial firms have been the biggest investors in the latest deals. Funds controlled by China International Capital Corp, the country's first investment bank, and Citic Securities Co, the largest brokerage by market value, were investors in both Huarong and the Sinopec stores.

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