The Bayan Resources Haji Isam deal did not come out of nowhere.
Days before Low Tuck Kwong agreed to sell 30% of Bayan Resources, Haji Isam had reportedly offered around US$3 billion for 62% of the coal giant.
No deal was announced.
Then three Bayan subsidiaries declared force majeure after they failed to receive approval for revised 2026 mining plans.
Five days later, Low Tuck Kwong and his daughter Elaine Low agreed to sell 30% of Bayan to Haji Isam’s company.
Two days after that, the government approved the mining plans.
There is no evidence that Low was forced to sell. There is also no evidence that the Indonesian government deliberately delayed the approvals to influence the transaction.
But the order in which everything happened has drawn attention.
Talk of Haji Isam entering Bayan had already been circulating in August.
On September 9, Bloomberg reported that an entity controlled by Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, better known as Haji Isam, had offered around US$3 billion in cash for 62% of Bayan Resources.
At Bayan’s market valuation then, the offer represented a discount of about 80%.
That was a huge gap.
Low Tuck Kwong and his daughter Elaine together controlled more than 60% of Bayan. As of March 2026, Bayan reported Low holding 40.22% and Elaine holding 22%.
No 62% sale followed the reported offer.
Then Bayan’s mining problem became public.
Three subsidiaries — PT Tiwa Abadi, PT Tanur Jaya and PT Fajar Sakti Prima — were waiting for government approval to revise their 2026 Work Plan and Budget, known in Indonesia as the RKAB.
The RKAB determines what mining activity and production volumes a company can legally carry out.
Bayan said it had submitted the applications according to the required rules, but approval had not arrived.
On September 11, Bayan and the three affected subsidiaries notified customers of a force majeure event.
The company said the unresolved RKAB approvals were affecting its ability to produce coal legally and meet supply commitments to customers.
The issue was serious enough for Moody’s to later change Bayan’s outlook from stable to negative.
Moody’s specifically pointed to regulatory uncertainty around production quotas and warned that prolonged uncertainty could hurt production and financial performance.
For one of Indonesia’s largest coal producers, this was far more than paperwork.
On September 16, Low Tuck Kwong and Elaine Low signed a conditional share purchase agreement with PT Jhonlin Baratama, Haji Isam’s investment vehicle.
Jhonlin agreed to acquire 10,000,000,500 shares, equal to about 30% of Bayan Resources.
The transaction price has not been disclosed.
That leaves one important detail unanswered.
Just one week earlier, Haji Isam had reportedly offered US$3 billion for 62%.
Now the same buyer had secured an agreement for 30%.
Without the final transaction value, there is no way to compare the two valuations properly.
The agreement is also conditional and still requires several conditions to be met before completion. Bayan has said the transaction should not create a material negative impact on its operations, legal position or finances.
Then came another development.
On September 18, the Indonesian government approved the revised 2026 RKABs for Tiwa Abadi, Tanur Jaya and Fajar Sakti Prima.
These were the same three subsidiaries whose delayed approvals had led to the force majeure declaration a week earlier.
The approvals removed one of the main obstacles affecting Bayan’s coal production and supply commitments.
Indonesia’s Director General of Minerals and Coal, Tri Winarno, had already said on September 16 that officials were still evaluating Bayan’s applications and expected to finish the process within the same week.
So there is an official explanation for why the approvals arrived when they did.
Still, put the dates beside one another:
September 9 — Haji Isam reportedly offers around US$3 billion for 62% of Bayan.
September 11 — Bayan and three subsidiaries declare force majeure over pending RKAB approvals.
September 16 — Low Tuck Kwong and Elaine Low agree to sell 30% of Bayan to Haji Isam’s Jhonlin Baratama.
September 18 — the revised RKABs for all three subsidiaries receive approval.
Those dates are now driving much of the discussion around the deal.
One correction is important.
Despite occasionally being mistaken for Malaysian because he carries the title “Dato’”, Low Tuck Kwong is not Malaysian.
Forbes describes him as Singapore-born. He moved to Indonesia in 1972 and built his business there. Bayan’s own corporate filings list him as an Indonesian citizen.
Low founded Bayan and built it into one of Indonesia’s largest coal groups.
He remains Bayan’s president director and controlling shareholder.
Haji Isam is already one of Indonesia’s most prominent businessmen, with interests across coal, plantations, logistics and other sectors.
The Jakarta Post described him directly as a Prabowo ally when reporting the Bayan transaction.
That description has added a political layer to what would otherwise be a large corporate share sale.
It does not prove President Prabowo or his government played any role in the transaction.
No public document currently shows that the government ordered Low to sell, pressured Bayan into accepting Haji Isam as a shareholder or made the RKAB approvals conditional on a deal.
Those claims would require evidence that has not surfaced.
But the connection has inevitably become part of the public discussion.
There is currently no proof of that.
The disclosed transaction shows Low and Elaine entering into a conditional share purchase agreement with Jhonlin Baratama.
Nothing released by Bayan says they sold under government pressure.
Likewise, Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry said the RKAB applications were undergoing evaluation.
So it would be inaccurate to report that Low was “forced” to sell as an established fact.
What can be reported is what happened before the sale.
The same buyer had already pursued a much larger stake.
That reported offer did not immediately result in a transaction.
Bayan then faced a regulatory issue serious enough to trigger force majeure.
Days later, its controlling shareholders agreed to sell 30% to that same buyer.
The outstanding approvals came shortly afterwards.
Readers can draw their own conclusions from there.
Online discussion has been far less restrained.
In one widely discussed Indonesian Reddit thread, commenters openly speculated that Haji Isam had political backing for the Bayan acquisition. Those comments are opinion, not evidence of government involvement.
Even before the 30% deal became official, former Indonesian state-owned enterprises minister Dahlan Iskan had compared the rumoured Bayan acquisition to Malaysia’s famous 1981 “Dawn Raid”, when Malaysian interests took control of Guthrie.
Dahlan drew parallels between that transaction and the possibility of Bayan changing hands, while asking whether Prabowo could be playing a role similar to Mahathir Mohamad. That was his own analogy, not proof that Prabowo directed the Bayan deal.
Terms such as “hostile takeover” have also appeared around discussion of the situation.
Technically, however, the disclosed 30% Bayan transaction does not fit the conventional definition of a hostile takeover.
Low and Elaine themselves signed the agreement.
Unless evidence later emerges showing that they acted against their wishes or under pressure, the term remains commentary rather than an established description of the transaction.
This is where the discussion moves beyond Bayan.
Indonesia wants foreign investment across mining, downstream processing, manufacturing and infrastructure.
Investors expect rules to change from time to time. Mining is heavily regulated almost everywhere.
But they also care about predictability.
Some netizens have raised a simple concern following the Bayan deal:
If even a company as large and established as Bayan Resources can have production disrupted by regulatory uncertainty while negotiations over ownership are happening, how confident should foreign investors feel?
That question does not assume the government interfered in the sale.
But perception matters in investment.
Moody’s decision to put Bayan on a negative outlook because of regulatory uncertainty shows that the permit issue itself carried real financial consequences, regardless of the share transaction.
Bayan’s share price also became highly volatile while takeover rumours and the RKAB problem circulated. Bloomberg Technoz reported that BYAN had fallen more than 20% over one month before subsequently jumping almost 20% after the 30% agreement became public.
Maybe the sale and the mining approvals were completely separate events.
The government says the applications were still going through the normal evaluation process.
Bayan’s controlling shareholders chose to sign a deal with Haji Isam.
And the revised RKABs received approval within the week officials had said they were targeting.
For now, there is no evidence establishing otherwise.
But the sequence remains difficult to miss:
US$3 billion offered for 62%.
No announced sale.
Force majeure.
30% sold to the same buyer.
Mining approvals two days later.
That is why people are still talking about Bayan Resources.
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