TAIPEI, Feb 3: Orix Corp., Japan's biggest leasing company, has agreed to buy a 33 per cent stake of Taiwan's Entie Bank for T$12 billion ($364 million), a newspaper reported on Saturday.

Orix would pay T$11.3 a share, or 30 per cent above Entie's Friday closing price of T$8.74, the Commercial Times said, citing unnamed industry sources.

Entie is a weak lender in Taiwan's overcrowded banking sector. Foreign interest has been heating up in Taiwan banks, which are slowly recovering from a consumer credit crisis. Entie and Orix would announce the deal as soon as next week, the Chinese-language paper said.

Entie has said it planned to hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in March to discuss raising an additional T$12 billion in capital, via which some analysts expected Entie would sell its shares to Orix.

—Reuters