MARC is of the view that the proposed disposals of Symphony Global Sdn Bhd (SGSB), Symphony Global Technologies Sdn Bhd (SGT) and Symphony Capital Sdn Bhd (SCSB) has no immediate impact to the corporate debt ratings of Symphony House Berhad’s (SHB) RM100 million Islamic Commercial Paper/Medium Term Notes (CP/TMN) at MARC-2ID/AID.

SHB had announced on 27 February 2007, that it intends to dispose SGSB, SGT and SCSB. SGSB is principally involved in amongst others, provision of system integration services, IT infrastructure consultancy and holds the sole distributorship of Silverlake Banking System in Malaysia whilst SGT is mainly involved in the provision of IT infrastructure and networking services. SCSB provides corporate finance advisory service to the Group.

The disposal of SGSB is expected to boost SHB’s cash coffers by RM35.0 million in addition to a sum of RM63.5 million received in March 2007 from Bolton Berhad as part of a profit guarantee attached to the latter’s sale in SGSB to SHB back in 2004. The disposals of SGT and SCSB will be via management buyout with disposal consideration of approximately RM10.0 million and RM0.5 million respectively. SHB is not expected to record any material gain or loss upon completion of the said disposals targeted by mid 2007.

The disposal of SGSB and SGT will result in a scale down of SHB’s IT Solutions division and the Group will be mainly focusing on business process outsourcing via its subsidiary, Vsource Asia Sdn Bhd as well as its corporate secretarial and share registrar businesses (Managed Services division), going forward. The IT Solutions division incurred an unaudited pre-tax loss in FY2006. With the divestments, MARC expects SHB’s revenue and profitability to exhibit more stability, going forward. In addition, MARC expects SHB to pare down its borrowings following the completion of the abovementioned disposals.