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| Southeast Asia |
| ChiCom's favorite port-managing company in trouble; Singapore comes to the rescue |
| 2006-04-27 |
| From East Asia Intel, subscription. PSA International, the port operator owned by the Singapore government’s investment trust Temasek, has come to the rescue of Li Ka Shing’s empire, which, according to Hong Kong sources, is hemorrhaging from losses in telecommunications. PSA has purchased 20 percent of Li’s Hutchison Whampoa Hong Kong-based operations. Hutchison Whampoa is the world’s second-largest port management company with operations at both ends of the Panama Canal and in the Bahamas as well as its Hong Kong and China operations. Links to Temasek Holdings HERE and HERE. The $4.39-billion cash deal comes two months after PSA dropped out of bidding for Britain's Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation. P&O went to Dubai Ports World, setting up a controversy over its operations in the U.S. due to its Arab base. Dubai settled the dispute by peeling off the American P&O assets to another independent entity. PSA is the world's second-largest container port operator. It dominates Singapore traffic, said to be the busiest in the world, but also has significant operations in Belgium, Rotterdam and the Netherlands through a subsidiary called Hesse-Noord Natie. The stake — the largest purchase in PSA’s history — does not give PSA control of Hutchison Whampoa. But it will give it a new presence in the fast-growing Chinese ports. As long as the ChiComs go along. PSA’s owner, Temasek, is generally seen as an arm of the Singapore government. That perception is reinforced by the fact that Ho Ching, appointed executive director of Temasek in 2002, is the second wife of Lee Hsien Loong, who became Singapore Prime Minister in 2004. Ho has been aggressively pursuing a policy of internationalization out of Temasek’s former primary function as a promoter of Singapore industry and services, with especially massive investments in Mainland China ventures. |
| Posted by:Alaska Paul |