JAKARTA -- Indonesian major property developer Lippo Karawaci on Monday protested Fitch Ratings' recent decision to cut its credit rating by two notches, in another blow to the Lippo conglomerate which has seen employees arrested as part of a bribery investigation into its flagship development project.
Fitch on Friday announced its downgrade of Lippo Karawaci's long-term foreign- and local-currency issuer default ratings from B to CCC+ -- citing liquidity risks as a result of uncertainty over asset sales, on which Lippo has been increasingly reliant to service debt obligations. The ratings agency added that uncertainty had been "potentially exacerbated" by bribery allegations surrounding Meikarta, a $21 billion urban project outside Jakarta developed by Lippo subsidiary Mahkota Sentosa Utama.
