Daewoo Electronics up for sale again

Mumbai: Creditors of South Korea''s Daewoo Electronics have put the company up again for sale, after a proposed deal worth $746 million with a Videocon Industries-led consortium failed earlier this year due to a price disagreement. Bids for the home appliances and television making arm of the defunct Daewoo Group will be accepted from November 26 to December 17 and creditors would pick up preferred bidders in January, a Daewoo spokesman said. The creditors had scrapped a plan in February to sell the company after failing to close a deal with a consortium comprising Videocon Industries Ltd. and RHJ International, the holding company of US buyout firm Ripplewood. "There are five or six overseas electronics companies and a Russian bank-led consortium that have shown interest in the deal," a source close to Woori Investment & Securities Co., one of the managers to the sale, said. Daewoo Electronics Corp creditors revived plans to sell South Korea''s third-largest chaebol Daewoo cut jobs and sold its car audio and navigation business to help creditors recoup funds used to bail out the company. The sale to Videocon was scrapped earlier this year because of differences over price after creditors rejected a bid by the Indian company to reduce its $754 million offer. "In the previous case, there was a general consensus that most of the payment would be used for restructuring, hence the relatively low bidding price," the Woori source said. "The value of the company has gone up since then, thanks to restructuring and workforce reductions," it added. Domestic creditors own 97.5 per cent of unlisted Daewoo Electronics, which was placed under a debt rescheduling programme after its parent group went bankrupt in 1999. State-run Korea Asset Management Corp. owns 57 per cent of Daewoo and Woori Bank holds 5.4 per cent, according to Daewoo''s latest annual report.