The sale of shares in Telekom Malaysia today opened as part of the government's efforts to woo more investors to the giant phone company and raise as much as RM3 billion.

State investment arm Khazanah Nasional, which owns about 42 percent of Telekom, has hired Credit Suisse First Boston Corp, CIMB and AmMerchant Bank to manage the sale to local and foreign investors, said Khazanah chief executive Anwar Aji.

Khazanah will decide tomorrow on the final number of shares to be sold depending on the offers it gets, he told financial news wire AFX-Asia.

"We have our target in terms of amount and price, but the final portion to be placed depends on the price," Anwar said.

A report in The Star newspaper at the weekend quoted sources as saying Khazanah would sell 150-300 million shares in Telekom in a private placement which could raise as much as three billion ringgit.

The shares may be sold at a discount of between five and nine percent to Telekom's market price, it said. Telekom share closed Monday trade at RM9.85, down 0.25 from Friday's close.

More shares

Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamed Yakcop said the move was to enhance liquidity for Telekom shares by making them more accessible to the public.

"One of the ways to promote the domestic equity market is to have more shares in private hands rather than the government," he was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency.

"It is not very good for the government to keep shares on its card. This is what we knew long time ago and this is what we have said."

The government has moved to discard stakes in some of the nation's biggest companies, including power firm Tenaga Nasional and Commerce Asset-Holding, to attract investors and trim its budget deficit to achieve a balanced budget by 2006, analysts say. - AFP