Ancora gets up to 5 pct of Bumi Resources: source

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Ancora Capital Management (Asia), an Indonesian private equity firm, has taken a stake of up to 5 percent in coal miner Bumi Resources (BUMI.JK), worth about $75 million, a person familiar with the situation said on Saturday.

Bumi, Indonesia's biggest coal miner, was the prize asset in the diversified Bakrie group, which has been struggling to raise money in order to repay about $1.2 billion of debt at a time when investors are pulling out of emerging markets such as Indonesia amid a global financial crisis and credit crunch.

Late on Friday night, the Bakrie group announced that most of its short-term debt problems had been settled following a deal with Indonesian private equity firm Northstar Pacific.

Patrick Walujo, Northstar's founder, said the investment firm would take over a "significant" chunk of the $1.2 billion owed by the Bakrie group in a bid to convert it into shares in Bumi.

Separately, Ancora is taking over Bumi shares that had been held by JPMorgan as collateral against a loan of $70-100 million, the person familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Ancora, which is focused on investing in Indonesia's natural resources sector and infrastructure, was set up earlier this year by Gita Wirjawan, the former head of JPMorgan's (JPM.N) Indonesian business, and raised about $300 million to invest.

Bumi controls two major coal mines, PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin Indonesia, located in Indonesia's resource-rich East Kalimantan province. Both mines produce high quality coal used in power plants. The coal-mining firm aims to sell 60 million tonnes of coal this year, or around a quarter of Indonesian output.

Bumi was briefly the biggest firm by market capitalization on the Indonesian bourse when its share price peaked in June.

But concerns over the Bakrie group's debts, coupled with the retreat in commodity prices and global market sell-off, knocked Bumi's share price down from an all-time high of 8,750 rupiah to a 2009 low of 640 rupiah in November, or less than one-tenth of the peak value.

Bakrie & Brothers (BNBR.JK), the listed holding company, is controlled by the family of Indonesia's chief social welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie, and has interests in palm oil, property and telecoms.

The group borrowed heavily to finance an aggressive expansion, using shares in Bumi as collateral.

As Bumi's stock plunged, some creditors started to sell off shares in Bumi that had been held as collateral, depressing the share price even further, brokers said.

Bumi shares on Friday closed at 1,010 rupiah, up 9.8 percent on the day.

(Editing by Tomasz Janowski)