PETALING JAYA (Sept 18): Taliworks Corp Bhd confirmed today that the company was in talks with Silk Holdings Bhd to buy the latter's wholly-owned subsidiary Sistem Lingkaran Lebuhraya Kajang Sdn Bhd.

Sistem Lingkaran Lebuhraya Kajang Sdn Bhd is the concession owner of the 37km Kajang Traffic Dispersal Ring Road, which is better known as Kajang Silk Highway in the Klang Valley. The 33-year concession ends in 2037.

Today, Taliworks' executive director Ronnie Lim Yew Boon said: "The talks are still at exploratory stage and if we finalise anything, we will make a proper announcement."

"Any highway projects in line with Taliworks' investment strategy are being explored," Lim said.

Lim, who was speaking to reporters after Taliworks' extraordinary general meeting, had confirmed a recent digitaledge Weekly report. digitaledge Weekly, quoting sources, reported that that Taliworks and Silk were in exploratory talks on the proposed highway concession transaction.

The Taliworks-Silk negotiations followed a failed deal between Silk and IJM Corp Bhd’s unit, Road Builder (M) Holdings Bhd, earlier. In November 2014, Silk and Road Builder scrapped the planned RM395 million acquisition of the 100% stake in Sistem Lingkaran Lebuhraya Kajang by Road Builder.

According to Silk's statement to the exchange then, the transaction failed to materialise, "due to non-fulfilment of all conditions, precedent within the agreed timeline."

Today, Lim said Taliworks was also eyeing other matured and cash-generating concessions like toll roads, besides waste management and power generation assets.

According to him, these concessions involved Malaysian and foreign assets. "It (talks) is with both local (companies) and abroad," he said. Lim declined to reveal which company Taliworks were in discussions with.

At 12:30pm, Taliworks' shares rose two sen or 0.6% to settle at RM3.49, for a market capitalisation of RM1.53 billion.
The stock saw 91,100 shares done.

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