ANZ has been working with a financial adviser to help field preliminary interest in its 38.8% holding in the Jakarta-listed lender known as Panin Bank, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Potential suitors have included Japanese and Southeast Asian lenders, including from Malaysia, the people said.

Considerations are ongoing and may not lead to a sale, the people said, noting that valuation is a hurdle to a potential deal. A spokesperson for ANZ declined to comment.

ANZ bought into Panin Bank in 1999, raising its stake to more than 38% a decade later. The Southeast Asian bank is 46% controlled by Indonesia’s Gunawan family, whose reluctance to give a board seat to incoming investors hampered ANZ’s earlier negotiations with suitors, Bloomberg News reported in 2015.

Panin Bank’s shares have risen 12% this year, giving the lender a valuation of almost 33 trillion rupiah (US$2.14 billion, or RM9.27 billion).

As part of efforts to trim its Asia business, ANZ sold its 21.7% stake in Malaysian lender AMMB Holdings Bhd (KL:AMBANK) earlier this year. Attempts to sell its Panin Bank holding stretch back more than a decade — in 2013, talks with Mizuho Financial Group Inc fell apart after new regulations made it more expensive to have minority investments overseas, Bloomberg News reported at the time.

Other Japanese banks, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, have previously considered bidding for Panin Bank, but those efforts stalled on valuation concerns.

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