Malaysia's Syed Mokhtar not seeking Utusan shares

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Malaysian tycoon Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary denied on Wednesday reports that he wanted to up his stake in Utusan Melayu , a politically important newspaper that speaks to Malaysia's Muslim-majority population.

Utusan and rival newspaper group New Straits Times Press (NST), both linked to UMNO, Malaysia's main Malay ruling party, dropped a plan to merge after it was derailed by politics and fears the union could spark a backlash against UMNO.

Syed Mokhtar was denying a report by state news agency Bernama, citing an unidentified source, that said the businessman, had in late 2006 sent representatives to UMNO, seeking to raise his stake in Utusan. He now controls as much as 30 percent of Utusan.

The report was inaccurate and baseless and Syed Mokhtar was not currently seeking shares in Utusan, the media agency representing the famously reclusive businessman said in an e-mail message to Reuters.

Malay-language newspaper Utusan and the English-language NST, are among Malaysia's oldest newspaper groups, and have slightly different editorial viewpoints. Utusan is more closely aligned with a Malay and Islamic agenda while NST is more mainstream.

Syed Mokhtar is one of Malaysia's most successful ethnic Malay, or Bumiputra, businessmen, who controls a clutch of public-listed companies including power and port firm MMC Corp .

Shares of Utusan jumped 7.5 percent on Wednesday compared with a 1.2 percent gain in the broader Malaysian market . MMC surged nearly 10 percent.

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