FACTBOX: New investor eyes big stake in Noble

(Reuters) - Noble Group Ltd (NOBG.SI) is in talks with an unidentified investor for a major stake in the $5.5 billion company that has interests ranging from coal to ethanol, the Singapore-listed commodities firm said on Wednesday.

Following are key facts about Noble:

The investment holding company is engaged, along with its subsidiaries, in managing the global supply chain/trading of agricultural, industrial and energy products; ship ownership, chartering and the provision of technical ship management services; trade finance; coal mining, soybean and sugar cane crushing activities, and ethanol production in Brazil.

Hong Kong-based Noble operates in two segments:

-- supply of agricultural, industrial and energy products segment, which comprises the businesses of supplying these commodities and the corporate investments;

-- logistics segment, which comprises the firm's ship ownership, vessel chartering and related operations and the provision of technical ship management services.

Its global network encompasses more than 100 offices in over 40 countries across five continents. From its Asian headquarters, Noble Group serves more than 4,000 customers worldwide.

Its CEO is Richard S. Elman

KEY DATA: (Three months to June '09) in US$

Revenue: 7,174.15 million

Operating Result: 274.01 million

Pretax Profit/Loss 266.4 million

Long Term Debt: 2,234.22 million

Shareholders' Equity: 2,421.11 million

Employees: 4,800

Website www.thisisnoble.com/

* RECENT EVENTS

- In September 2008, Noble and H.E.S. Beheer N.V. acquired Maas Silo B.V.

-- In November 2008, it announced the sale of its interest in Portman Limited.

- As of May 27, 2009, Noble held a 58.36 percent interest in Gloucester Coal Limited. (GCL.AX)

- Noble took over clean storage tanks from Cargill at Vopak to store gasoline this year, and started trading on the Singapore cash market for the first time in early May.

- Plans to boost distribution and storage capabilities in oil hub Singapore and China in the near future.

- Started distillates trading in London in 2009.

- Branching out into the European power and gas sectors, after recruiting three former executives from hedge fund GLG Partners Inc GLG.N in 2009.

- Laying the groundwork for tank farms for distillates, ethanol, biodiesel, vegetable oil and gasoline in Rotterdam.

- These tanks farms will have a storage capacity of 500,000 cu m in 2011.

- Finalising construction of a large-scale soya crushing plant in Argentina.

(Compiled by Seng Li Peng, Editing by Ramthan Hussain and Anshuman Daga)