KUALA LUMPUR: Businessman Datuk Siew Ka Wei, who acquired The Malay Mail last year and is on the verge of taking over Bernama TV, is now eyeing the business daily The Malaysian Reserve, as part of his ambition to build a sizeable media group.

Sources said lawyers of Siew and the current owner of the business paper, Tunku Datuk Ya’acob Tunku Abdullah, were looking at the proposals on the table.

“They (the lawyers) are in talks and are reviewing the proposals that both parties have proposed (and) a review of accounts has been undertaken,” said a senior executive familiar with the negotiations.

It is understood that Tunku Ya’acob had at one stage put a RM20 million price tag on the loss-making The Malaysian Reserve, but sources said it was unlikely any deal could be done at that price.

Siew is considering an outright purchase or an acquisition of a 51% stake, to be paid by a combination of cash and shares.

Together with his business partner Datuk Mohamad Al Amin Abdul Majib, Siew plans to use their two outdoor advertising companies — Redberry Sdn Bhd and Meru Utama Sdn Bhd — as the vehicles to build a news media group.

They bought a majority stake in the country’s oldest English newspaper The Malay Mail last year. The government has agreed to sell Bernama TV to them and while they have taken over the management of the news channel, a definitive sales and purchase agreement has yet to be inked, sources say.

Siew is the controlling shareholder of Ancom Bhd, a company that manufactures agricultural chemicals and herbicides.

“Any opportunity that comes along, we will look at it,” Siew had told The Edge weekly in December last year, when asked if he was looking at any other media buys after he bought and turned The Malay Mail into a free afternoon paper.

The Malaysian Reserve hit the streets in May 2007, days after The Edge Financial Daily, also a business daily. The country had no standalone daily business paper since the Business Times was folded into The New Straits Times in 2002 as a result of escalating costs and dwindling circulation.

All eyes will certainly be on Siew and Mohamad Al Amin to see if the acquisition of The Malaysian Reserve takes place. Should it come to pass, they would have control of three key media platforms — making them a media force to try and challenge the dominance of newspaper giants like The Star Publications (M) Bhd and The New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd.

This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, March 30, 2010.