Seoul-based private equity firm MBK Partners is planning to buy Japanese golf course operator Accordia Golf in a deal that could value the company as much as 160 billion yen ($1.5 billion), three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Thomson Reuters.

Shares in Accordia Golf surged as much as 13 per cent in Tokyo on Friday when trading began after an early suspension pending a company statement. Accordia said in its statement that the company has nothing to disclose at the present.

In what would be one of Japan's biggest private equity deals in recent years, the people told Thomson Reuters, a loan-focused news service, that the country's big three banks - Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group - are working on arranging senior loans worth 75 billion yen ($713.4 million) for MBK Partners to fund the deal.

As much as 35 billion yen ($332.9 million) of mezzanine finance may also be provided, the people said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media about the planned acquisition, which includes debt.

By 0446 GMT, Accordia shares were up 10 per cent, giving the firm a market value of about 100 billion yen ($951.2 million). As of March, it had net debt of 57.7 billion .

Accordia was set up by Goldman Sachs Group after it bought a series of golf course businesses in Japan that went bankrupt after the country's sharp economic downturn in the early 1990s.

Goldman took the company public in 2006, selling its last holding in Accordia in 2011.

Accordia is 18.95 per cent owned by investment fund Reno which is partly owned by Yoshiaki Murakami, a Japanese activist investor, as well as two other parties related to Murakami.

As of May the firm owned 43 golf courses nationwide, and managed an additional 93 golf courses.

In the fiscal year ended March, its net profit fell 9.2 per cent to 5.46 billion yen ($51.9 million), while revenue dropped 24 per cent to 48.5 billion yen ($461.3 million). - Reuters