Our SWFs especially Temasaek (as that Kay Poh S’porean living in Tokyo keeps reminding us) placed big chips on private equity. So it’s interesting that the FT reported that Princeton reports “a 1.7 per cent loss last year, a product mainly of private equity underperformance”.
Princeton University’s endowment, known for its aggressive bets on private equity, is facing the “worst ever environment” for the asset class as a slump in dealmaking and public listings weighs on returns, according to its outgoing chief investment officer.
Princeton endowment chief sees ‘worst ever’ private equity climate
Alibaba abandoned a planned IPO for its logistics division, Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, instead offering to buy out minority shareholders in the business. Temasek and GIC are minority shareholders.
Peanuts are the payout:
represents 0.7 times forecast 2024 sales, according to analysts at Jefferies
The shell game investors in PE have been playing is that they try to draw out more (cashed out of older investments) than they have to pay out for new investments.
The game has changed, PE funds are calling for money while being unable to cash out of investments.
Singapore’s $300bn investment fund Temasek and the venture capital arm of one of Abu Dhabi’s largest sovereign investors, Mubadala, have held talks with biotechs to fund development of psychedelic mental health treatments and clinics, according to three people familiar with discussions.
… are bankrolled by countries that have some of the world’s most restrictive laws on drug possession … Singapore has executed at least 15 people for drug-related offences in the past two years.
In an uncertain and volatile era, Temasek’s long-term portfolio construction is shaped by four key structural trends: Digitisation, sustainable living, future of consumption, and longer lifespans for long-term growth. Discover their relevance and how Temasek leverages on them.
Singapore’s state investor Temasek is selling around S$400 million ($295.92 million) worth of shares, or a 1.85% stake, in the country’s national carrier Singapore Airlines (SIA), according to a term sheet seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
The shares are priced between S$7.202 and S$7.283 per share, the sheet shows, representing a 2.89% and 3.97% discount to the last close of S$7.50 on Wednesday.
Artémis was attracted by the opportunity of working with Singapore’s Temasek, which the French group believes shares a similar long-term outlook and which will remain a minority shareholder in CAA.
FT story
Artémis is owned by French luxury goods billionaire François-Henri Pinault. It has reached an agreement to buy a majority stake in Creative Artists Agency (CAA) from private equity firm TPG, the parties involved said on Sept. 8.
The transaction, through holding company Artemis, adds Hollywood’s premiere talent agency to Pinault’s family empire which spans fashion, wine and contemporary art.
Reuters
Re “shares a similar long-term outlook”: I’m sure some anti-PAP folks will have a lot to say about who they say are Temasek’s real owners. LOL.
Further to Temasek’s Bayer deal shows the peril of a being contrarian investor, German pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals group Bayer said yesterday it will take a €2.5bn writedown on glyphosate glyphosate because prices and demand collapsed. The goodwill impairment would cause a net loss of €2bn in the second quarter, Bayer said.
Earlier this month there was a report that Bayer may spin off its troubled crop science division.
Bayer’s component parts, valued separately on peer multiples, would have a total equity value of 96 billion euros, Breakingviews calculated in February, or almost double the group’s current market capitalisation.
Either earlier this year or late last year Sembcorp Marine (now Seatrium) came out with a brochure to persuade us shareholders to support its merger with Keppel’s offshore operations.
There was no mention of oil and gas, both cos’ source of biz. Instead lots of pixs and hot air about green energy products.
Well well now
Seatrium could also benefit from the demand/supply gap that may stem from the growth in global offshore wind and Europe’s continued push into wind. Industry estimates that global offshore wind could grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% to 20% over the 2022-2030/2035 period although Europe may face supply-related problems in or around 2028/2029 when offshore turbine towers and wind tower manufacturing capacity may see demand far outstripping supply.
“In our view, Seatrium could benefit from this in the next six to 12 months as European governments take note of the demand/supply gap and place orders for offshore structures well in advance,” says Loh.
“There is precedence in this given that in March, Seatrium received a EUR3 billion ($4.44 billion) order for offshore wind farm structures that would only be delivered between 2029-2031,” he adds.
Btw, I’m still holding the shares I acquired at 0.08cents: Tempting fate but thanks again Ho Ching. And I didn’t sell the shares that I got because I’m a Keppel shareholder.
One day I’ll be crying as the vultures circle. Hopefully I’ll be crying all the way to the bank to deposit my winnings. LOL.
(Part of an occassional series on our SWF’s failures,)
Saw him no ak isit?
He was appointed CEO of JPMorgan in 2006. And he and JPMorgan had a good 2007/ 2008 crisis. It bot, at the Fed’s request, Bear Stearns, a failing investment bank, and mortgage lender Washington Mutual, the biggest ever bank failure.
It’s more recent performance
Share price has outperformed Citi and BofA (Reminder Temasek bot into BofA by betting on Merrill Lynch (Remember them?) and took a beating.
From a 2009 report
Singapore’s smaller fund Temasek Holdings lost an estimated over $4 billion in Bank of America-Merrill Lynch BAC.N and Barclays BARC.L in hasty exits around the start of 2009.
Singapore’s largest sovereign wealth fund GIC said on Tuesday it had halved its stake in Citigroup C.N to below 5 percent, making a profit of $1.6 billion as global equity markets rebound.
The first of an occasional series on Temasek dogs with fleas on them.
Bayer, an aspirin-to-crop chemicals group, shares are trading at around €52, about half of what they were in 2016, The wider German stock market is up by a quarter.
It made a US$63bn takeover of US crops group Monsanto in 2016. The market did not like the deal.
Why I’m still not selling the SIA shares that I acquired in a rights issue in 2020 at $3. It depends on premium passengers.
Keep on doing Temasek specials, Temasek: massive rights issue at huge discounts to current prices. It benefits long term shareholders whose cost is very low.
My Spring Festival ang pow from Temasek came before chap gor mei. I didn’t expect any $ from Temasek’s CSE Special until Easter.
Yesterday, I broke even on my CSE shares post rights slightly more than one month after being allocated excess rights. If I include the dividends that I got since the original purchase, I’m comfortably ahead.
See CSE Global: Another Temasek present (Christmas)? for the background and why taking part in TLCs’ rights issues are no brainers. OK, OK things did go badly wrong in Sembcorp Marine’s 2020 Temasek Special. But nobody’s perfect.
Or there are some FT financial engineers there trying very hard to show the private equity funds that they should employ them as financial engineering specialists who know how to borrow up to hairline.
In 2020 when markets were crashing, Temasek bot a 25% stake in CSE at around 46 cents. It’s a software provider and manager for mining and energy companies. Temasek’s the largest shareholder. I had the opportunity to pick-up the shares at around the same level.
I expected another Temasek special (deeply discounted and massive rights issue). I had to wait almost two years. But it pays a good dividend.
The shares traded up to 51 cents. Two brokers were bullish but the stock did bugger all trading between 46 – 51 cents (mostly closer to 46) until a few months ago. The brokers then became “neutral” on the shares and the shares broke below 46 cents (their TP was now about 44 cents). Looks like they suspected what was coming: a Temasek special.
1 for 5 rights at 33 cents raising $33.5m. The theoretical ex-price according to the co was about 40 cents. Funnily enough, taking into account the dividends Temasek and I got, that was our cost price. Btw, the rights issue was not underwritten. Temasek was playing croupier or chung kee.
Market didn’t like the rights and sold the shares down to 33.5 – 34 cents.
I applied for excess rights, got a lot (but not my full application) and my cost is now about 38 cents. Temasek’s cost is closer to 40 cents because it didn’t get excess shares. Greedy plebs like me got priority.
The shares are now trading at 34 cents.
All to play for.
And bottom fishers can come in at below Temasek’s entry price of 40 cents.
Temasek has written off its US$275mn stake in cryptocurrency company FTX, saying its trust in former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried appeared “misplaced”.
Much has been written by PAP and anti-PAP paper warriors and investors.
Talking about two Canadian pension funds losing $ in two crypyo investments (one of which was FTX) this year, the FT pronounced (or should it be” pontificated”?)
Pension funds have no business investing customers’ retirement savings in a market as volatile as crypto.
FTX’s $8bn crunch exposes a dog-eat-dog cryptosphere
Btw, while Temasek took its time admitting the cock-up, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan disclosed almost immediately that the US$95mn investment in FTX FTX collapse will have ‘little impact’ on its performance. “Naturally, not all of the investments in this early-stage asset class perform to expectations,” loss on this investment will have limited impact on the Plan, given this investment represents less than 0.05% of our total net assets.”
“The challenge is, if we want European levels of welfare payments and public spending, you cannot finance that with American levels of tax rates,” said Lord Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, to the BBC recently.
As Chris Kuan, the retired chief economist of GIC and many others have said, we can have our welfare cake and eat it by making our reserves work harder.
Gupta makes DBS Great. Previous ang moh or pseudo ang mohs made it a laughing stock. CEOs Btw, he’s another Citibanker
Our other two banks are also looking good. Eat your heart out, the overseas based anti-PAP paper warrior. U should bot into them.
Which reminds me of a clueless tai tai (Tai tai’s luck runs out, heading for Woodbridge?/ Tai tai forgot this ), sold her SPH shares her elderly husband gave her when they married in the 90s, sold them and bot DBS when she panicked in 2020. She then sold DBS because she said UOB paid more in dividends (What an ass). Then sold UOB to buy SPH when it spiked from 1.20 to 1.90 last year, then sold out in panic when it weakened before it rebounded
. Her husband told her to buy back the UOB because it was cum dividend and there was 80 cents in it.
This reminded me that I forgot (Thank you Ho Ching) to also thank her for another Temasek special (massive rights issue at a huge discount to the existing price) that’s looking good.
Sembcorp Marine announces change in terms of Keppel O&M transaction
The share price tanked last year (It was already sick because of a previous Temasek special in 2020, followed by a really bad results) when Temasek did another special.
As I wanted good quality TLC penny stock exposure to the offshore marine and energy sectors, I bot a few shares and then applied for lots of rights shares at $0.08. I got filled to the gills.
The shares have been on a wild run: up to $0.138 and then back down to -$0.11 recently. I regretted not selling out at +$0.13. But I was going for $0.16 or more. After the above announcement, they are back to +$0.13. Riding the tornado like Pecos Bill: GameStop in charts: Riding the tornado
Usually when Temasek does a special, shareholders or new investors who participate make $. It’s money for jam. The downside is finding the cash to fund it. Not like Temasek. Need $, make a call to MoF and PMO if dividend income not enough.
Not always, Sembcorp Marine did an earlier rights issue at $0.20 in 2020. Everyone lost $ when it had a really bad set of results. Hence the 2021 rights issue. At that time I didn’t want exposure to the offshore marine and energy sectors, so I missed a bullet. Praise the Supreme Being. And yes, I made a charitable donation.
But I really shouldn’t be counting my chickens, tempting fate or the gods. Not taken profits. And no immediate plans to. I’ll ride the whirlwind on this ($0.19 says a broker) and hope to come out alive or belter still smiling. Why Wall St is a cowboy town.
Minority shareholders (those who participated in 2020 Temasek special) might reject the deal (one reason why the terms were changed).
And pray that I remain lucky. I’ll be getting more SembCorp Marine shares via Keppel distribution. Might sell these.
SIA redeems outstanding zero coupon MCBs worth $3.5 bil
Edge magazine headline
reminded me that she retired from Temasek on 1 November last year.
It also reminded me that my mum and I made decent $ on SIA shares and MCBs.
My mum once had 900+ SIA shares. Why this odd number I don’t know and neither does she. It’s been there for decades.
Anyway I never got round to selling this when she transferred her shares to me for me to manage a few years ago. She’ll be 99 next year.
So when 2020 came and SIA did a “Temasek Special” (Massive and deeply discounted rights issue), I applied for excess shares and MCBs. Ended up with 3,000 shares and 3,000 MCBs.
(Applying was a massive headache because I had to use PayNow. But it was Covid time, so no-one to blame except self for being unfamiliar with this payment mode. First and last time I used it.)
And in 2021, we got another 6,000 MCBs.
I’ll get round to selling the SIA shares one day soon. And buy into SATs. There’s another pending Temasek Special that is upsetting minority shareholders.
Meanwhile an additional $3,000+ to pay for the groceries. There’ll be $100 early next from the PAP govt using our money.
This despite inflation not abetting in this quarter, something that our millionaire ministers said would happen earlier this here.
In early July, I wrote about looming markdowns to private assets referencing the comments of Temasek’s CIO defending Temasek’s investments in private assets: Was Temasek’s CIO whistling in the graveyard? Note that GIC is also big investor in private assets.
Recently, the managers of Harvard University’s $51bn endowment have warned of substantial markdowns to come in its private equity and venture capital portfolio, predicting heavy losses for institutional investors.
He was very bullish in his remarks about Temasek’s unlisted assets: see below. Wondering out loud, because maybe being super KS (a PAP Hard Truth) now requires Temasek’s unlisted assets valued as at 31 March 2022 to be marked down by 30% to reflect present day reality?
No I’m not being anti-PAP or alarmist. I just read the international financial media and extrapolate what I read into the S’pore context. Something our constructive, nation-building media don’t do because they are constructive, and nation-building.
Let’s begin at the beginning.
A typical example of how our our constructive, nation-building media reported Temasek’s results:
Temasek Holdings’ net portfolio value reaches record S$403 billion, made up of mostly unlisted assets for first time
Going by the usual definition of “unlisted assets”, Temasek’s unlisted assets include investments in private equity, venture capital. property and infrastructure. Btw, the differences between these categories are often very thin. One category can morph into another and then another.
‘Mapletree Investments (property), the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) (infrastructure), and the Singapore Power (SP) Group (infrastructure) are examples of unlisted assets.
In the past decade, this segment of the portfolio has generated returns over 10% per annum through IPOs, trade sales or from the performance of the businesses. The value of these unlisted assets has risen nearly four-fold from S$53bn to S$210bn. It was money for jam to invest in unlisted assets:
Cheap debt is a red rag to private-equity bulls: around half a typical buy-out is paid for using debt, magnifying the returns to investors’ capital. It has played a critical role in each buy-out boom period; the present one can trace its genealogy directly to rate cuts by central banks during the global financial crisis.
Below is part of Chris Kuan’s FB post on Temasek’s unlisted assets. Read how Temasek’s CIO bullishly (Or defensively for cynics like me?) pictures what Temasek’s unlisted assets are doing for our reserves, and Chris K’s retorts. My take, if so good why die die must raise GST in the face of inflation?
But before you read it, here’s some analyses from the Economist and the FT on private equity investments (Remember the lines between the various categories of unlisted assets are often very thin).
If they are revalued today, they be marked could down around a third. Do remember that Temasek’s unlisted assets are valued as of as 31 March 2022.
The analyses of the FT and Economist are premised on the view that public markets are a useful window on the future of unlisted assets. The view on that premise is ugly, very ugly.
Firstly,
One index, which maps private-equity portfolios to their public stockmarket equivalents, is down by 37% this year.
Secondly, in the UK, investment trusts that invest in private equity are now trading at big discounts to their reported net asset valuations (NAVs), reports the FT. The average being currently well over 30%. The reason? Investors expect the value of a lot of the holdings will soon be written down in line with price falls in listed markets.
Unlisted assets benefit
from a fig leaf of illiquidity, resulting in a delay between real and reported fund valuations. In the absence of a liquid market to price investments, private-equity funds assess the current “fair value” of their portfolio based on the price an investment would realise in an “orderly transaction”, which should look similar to the valuations of comparable companies in the public markets.
But to be fair to Temasek, the situation is not be that bad for some (Or maybe most?) of its unlisted assets. The FT explains that “not all private equity trusts invest in the kind of early-stage growth businesses that are collapsing in value”. It goes on, “Some are focused on mature businesses and focused on profits and cash flows.” These should not see the same writedowns.
PSA, and SP Group are good examples “of mature businesses and focused on profits and cash flows” that should not see huge writedowns.
And do note that in the recent quarter, Blackstone (tua kee in unlisted assets: it started life in private equity) marked down its US$276bn portfolio of corporate private equity investments by 6.7%. And some funds tied to real estate and credit investments were also marked down. One fund had had virtually all of its investment gains wiped out. So maybe a 30% markdown is alarmist?
Let’s hope the bulk of Temasek’s unlisted assets are like PSA and SP Group, but as Chris K KPKBs, we juz don’t and won’t know.
The CIO may wax lyrical about the “liquidity”, “steady dividends” and “insights” derived from unlisted assets, the fact that unlisted assets comprised the majority means Temasek’s portfolio is more illiquid, hence higher risk. The more fully owned assets it has, the more difficult it will be for the company to sell assets at a pinch and at a reasonable price. Add in the issue of price discovery for assets that has no ready market, you can see how risks have gone up. This is the asset liquidity issue raised by S&P a few years ago when the rating agency gave a much lower standalone credit rating that is apart from the implicit guarantee from the Republic (which by implication means Temasek’s AAA rating is undeserved if it were not for the implicit state guarantee).
Now becos unlisted assets are illiquid any asset manager investing in them needs to price in the illiquidity premium….. which is to say if the expected total return from a listed asset is 10%, that of an equivalent unlisted assets should be higher in order to compensate for the risk that it is difficult to sell and the price discovery is poorer. The CIO says the unlisted assets in Temasek more than compensate for the illiquidity premium but beyond words, no picture no sound. Here is the problem with unlisted or private assets – the manager of these assets have ample opportunity to fudge asset values. It is a well known trait among such managers, i.e. the private equity funds, to be slow in marking down asset values when stock market fall like presently but quick to mark them up when markets are rising. A clear example of the fudge can be seen when private equity assets have not been marked down or marked down little in comparison to the stock price of listed investment companies holding private credit assets which had been hammered (there is little difference between private equity and private credit). So what are the board of directors got to say about this – they obviously approve but are the returns justified by the increased risks and the increased non transparency of asset values. Someone did pontificate that Temasek generate “good risk adjusted returns” some years ago and yours truly wonder if the term “good risk adjusted returns” is really understood.
Chris Kuan
Having read this post, maybe you will share my very cynical tots that the CIO was defensive (rather than bullish)? And maybe he was whistling in the graveyard? He’s hoping not to write the obituary of unlisted investments in next year’s annual report. We should hope not. LOL.
GST at 15% to save our reserves from being the investments in unlisted assets?
In a report last week, UOB Kay Hian raised Sembmarine’s target price to 13 cents, citing new order wins in oil and gas and renewables, and the potential upsizing of the company’s capabilities following a merger with Keppel O&M.
It added that, based on a five-year price-book ratio of 1.1 times, the stock prices should be 14.3 cents; while a 10-year price-book average of 1.5 implies a stock price of 18.9 cents.
Fyi, I bot a tiny amount before the shares went ex-rights last year and then applied for a lot of excess rights shares at 8 cents.
In case you don’t know, a merger of Keppel O&M and Sembmarine is being worked out.
Finally Temasek has gotten its way on the merging of Keppel’s and Sembcorp’s offshore marine businesses. Since the recession in the 80s, it’s been trying but Keppel wanted to be top dog because its rig business was bigger and better. Sembcorp didn’t want to lose face.
Now Keppel wants to get rid of the business and Sembcorp cut loose Sembmarine last year. Sembcorp shares are flying. Expect Keppel’s to do the same. I also got Keppel shares.
I couldn’t help but think of Temasek when I saw the first chart in an article on DBS. It owns controlling stakes in DBS and Stan Chart.
It has to thank the FT CEO of DBS (OK, OK, he’s now a citizen). The “T” stands for “Talent”. But then S’poreans deserve a break. For a long time, the “T” in FT stood for “Trash” when it came to the quality of DBS’s FT CEOs, two ang mohs and one ABC. One ang moh and the ABC came from JPMorgan. It specialised in corporate and investment banking, not consumer banking.
Gupta came from the consumer banking side of Citicorp.
Btw, if anyone is wondering about UOB’s price to book value, it’s 1.2, a shade below OCBC’s 1.3.
Temasek is temporarily halting new investment in Chinese tech companies owing to uncertainty over Beijing’s crackdown on the sector, its chief strategist told Nikkei Asia.
Sipahimalani said once it is known what is expected of the tech platforms, it will be possible to assess the impact on businesses like Didi, and thus determine the merits of investing in a particular company.
Sipahimalani said China will remain a focus for Temasek.
He cited areas like medical technology, biotech, electric vehicles and renewable energy as high growth spaces in China that the investment firm will continue to look at, in addition to keeping an eye on how the situation in the tech sector plays out.
“These internet platforms are not going way,” Sipahimalani said. “They create millions of jobs, so … I don’t think anyone is going to think that they are going to go away, but the framework under which they operate, the rules under which they operate may go through some changes.”
This is the problem
“When there is no clarity about the regulatory rule book, it is difficult to say — is this fair value or not fair value — so I think we would rather be patient and wait.”
Ah yah go buy more things in MamaLand, the place the PAP govt loves
Whatever, in allowing in travellers from India, the PAP govt is doubling down on its love of all things from India. Imagine the uproar from S’poreans if one of these travellers is infected with Covid-19 and this results in another lockdown that is not really a lockdown: PAP govt’s idea of living with Covid-19?
Shipyards and fabricators that in the past turn out massive oil platforms are now assembling offshore wind kit, Hence SM’s move into renewables, a decade long transition. It says that work is progressing satisfactorily on the renewable projects it has on its books.
After the close of Temasek’s mandatory takeover at 8 cents a week ago, the shares closed at 8.5 cents on Friday. Now trading at 0.86 and 0.87.
Remember that Keppel is talking to SM about merging their offshore marine businesses.
After winning a digital bank licence here last yr, the Grab-SingTel venture is expected to be in contention for more such licences in the region. I think it’s bidding for one such licence in M’sia with local partners.
The u/m shows why this j/v with Grab could be extremely lucrative.
Of course given the size of SingTel’s earnings’ base, any contribution is likely to be “peanuts” and on the margin. But who knows? The j/v can grow like Topsy, given the size of the addressable market and the connections SingTel can bring via its associates in Thailand, Indonesia and PinoyLand can bring. And there are the Pinoy and Indon maids that need to remit $ home.
In my portfolio SingTel is a dog, good dividend though which I take in scrip form, like Temasek.
So here’s hoping. LOL.
And with plenty of luck, maybe it’s associates in the Philippines and Indonesia may get really lucky:
Mobile phone operators MTN and Airtel have both received partial approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria to operate mobile payments in the country.
BBC report earlier today
The last paragraph was added at 1.80 pm on day of publication.
I bot into some Sembcorp Marine cum rights at 0.083. And I applied for excess shares, lots of them at 0.08. Got filled.
Now sitting back at cost of 0.082 with Temasek’s backstop of a mandatory bid at 0.08. Temasek’s stake was raised to 46.6% from 42.2% due to its rights issue.
Singapore Inc gains new figurehead as Temasek appoints next chief
FT headline
Googling “figurehead”
figurehead
1.a carving, typically a bust or a full-length figure, set at the prow of an old-fashioned sailing ship.
2.a nominal leader or head without real power.
But there’s more. The article talks of Ho Ching persuading him to join Temasek 20 yrs ago when he was 37 and one of S’pores’s best corporate lawyers. It took three years of persuasion
with final discussions taking place over a meal of Pillay’s favourite chai tow kway (stir-fried radish) at Singapore’s Four Seasons hotel.
FT
Wah his favourite chai tow kuay is cooked at Four Seasons hotel. Even when I was an equities broker and trader, never tot of ordering chai tow kuay at an atas hotel. It was a decadent indulgence too far to order hawker food in an atas hotel. But then I was only a pleb (albeit with old money relations: think the College of Alice & Peter Tan) who juzhappened to be earning serious money. I was lucky enough to participate in the M’sian bull run of the 90s.
Whatever, in Which minister will take the Chinese Kung Flu vaccine?, I talked of putting down my elderly dog, who like Heng, had a serious stroke attack, but who unlike Heng was paralysed in its hind legs. I forgot to tell readers that fortunately, a week earlier, I was gifted a rescued S’porean puppy with Doberman blood. It came to me when it was about a year old (Dobermans are puppies until 18 months.) when the previous owner found him a handful: first time dog owner. He’s trainable but I do wish I had him at 2-4 months: a lot easier to train.
Always start training dogs as early as possible.
Coming back to Pillay, he was born in M’sia and went to university in the UK. Like junior minister Puthu who was proud he didn’t do NS:
I didn’t like him because of his sneer at NS (equating saving lives with doing NS. Dr PaulA, put him down by pointing out that there are docs who do NS (including reservist and save lives), and because he said his view on ISA was secret (PAP locked up dad, then deported him).
In the West, the latest investment fashion is to buy into sports teams. Private equity is rushing to buy into European football teams. Italian clubs have put up “For sale” signs.
“Sports assets have shown a low correlation relative to the broader market, with teams selling for record values through the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19″, said Michael Kenworthy, head of sports investment banking at Goldman Sachs. He added that some valuations had outperformed other traditional investment benchmarks, such as the S&P 500.
“If you’re thinking about what’s the best way to construct a portfolio and you want to diversify, there could be, potentially, merit having sports assets in that portfolio,” he added.
Well the A-Rabs led the way. Many moons ago,
Sheikh Mansour bought Sitty for US$360m in 2008. Now a Chinese consortium led by China Media Capital is to buy a 13% stake in Manchester City* for US$400m. That puts City’s value at US$3bn.
Local brokers are still dying even if retail punters are returning because Covid-19 lockdowns (Sorry “circuit breakers”) mean bored S’poreans e-trade. They should learn from Robinhood. No not free brokerage (It’s Pay And Pay Land here) but providing lists of trades that were the most popular among its customers in an effort to encourage trading on its app and site. And when trades are completed on the platform, customers are sent emoji-laden messages prompting them to purchase additional shares.
As to foreign ownership, after all FT’s run the place even if the CEO is the token local.
Seriously look at this chart
See how concentrated the ownership is. And “Others” include a couple of Chinese King Kongs: HKSE and the mainland exchanges.
Time for SGX to join the world: sell itself before it becomes irrelevant. Pigs will fly first though.
For the record: Over 20% of SGX shares are held by SEL Holdings, a special-purpose company wholly owned by Temasek Holdings under Singapore’s regulations that restrict the exercise of votes attached to shares of financial exchange companies.
Ant, the fintech controlled by Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma, will sell shares in a dual listing in Shanghai and HK. The sale, roughly 3.34bn shares, which account for 11% of Ant’s total outstanding stock, will fetch US$34.4bn
The Shanghai portion is worth Rmb114.9bn (US$17.2bn) or about half the total. GIC is subscribing for Rmb2bn worth of shares (1.7%) and Temasek wants for Rmb1.5bn (1.3%) in Shanghai portion. Institutional buyers in the onshore deal agreed to hold half of their shares for 12 months, and the other half for 24 months.
Assuming that GIC and Temasek don’t buy any shares in the HK offering, GIC and Temasek will collectively own 1.5% of the public offering. Remember that the HK and Shanghai tranches are rough the same.
In the overall context of Jack’s and Alibaba’s holdings, the amount bis “peanuts”.
Worse, he’s coming across as saying to the plebs, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” He might even come across as justifying Liew’s actions because Liew “contributed to both public service and private sector in Singapore for the benefit of Singapore.”
Let me explain my tots.
CAG chairman Liew Mun Leong has contributed to S’pore, public should hear his side of the story: Temasek executive
Headline in constructive, nation-building media.
The Temasek executive said he deserved to be heard because “he contributed to both public service and private sector in Singapore for the benefit of Singapore”.
The Temasek executive should note that Mr Liew has been silent and declined to comment when ST “who licked his balls and ass fawned over him last yr over his book on leadership) asked him to comment on what had happened.
So how caqn the plebs can follow his advice since Liew decided to sit down and shut up, even with a balls and ass licking fawner?
More importantly, Liew was paid a lot of money as a consequence of his “contribution” to S’pore: not enough isit? No must also allow him to “fix” an innocent person, is the message I seem to get from the Temasek executive even if it’s not what he actually said.
Jokes aside, seriously, at the very least the Temasek executive is implying that natural aristocrats got to close ranks and give the finger the plebs.
At the very worse, the Temasek executive is implying that if someone never contribute to S’pore in a big way, it means there is no need to hear the person’s version of events? Follows from that it’s right to allow Liew to fix his maid because she has no right to be heard?
Btw, the “Temasek executive” is Temasek’s International CEO Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara. He should pull the other leg, its got bells on it.
Here’s a more nuanced judgement from a FB pleb:
More inclined to agree with Min Shan about not jumping to conclusions. Ie. people shouldn’t be making statements like maybe the district judge has no integrity, or the rich find a way to escape, blah blah. But with regards to his side of the story. legally it is done isn’t it? At least his family has spent the past few years putting forth their version of events, which has now been proven untrue. Maybe what this article means it, don’t write the man off completely. Maybe he’s not as bad as people think. And that is probably true. IMHO more likely he succumbed to covering up for his family. The wife and son look like the real bad eggs here. Maybe he’s a decent man (who really contributed to the country), but he was weak in terms of protecting his family. Who knows? But that is besides the point in the way the article is written. Does it mean that if someone never obviously contributed to Singapore means there is no need to hear their version of events? No right? Because if in that case, the maid never contribute much to Singapore. But thankfully our high court heard her version of events.
Here’s another FB pleb who has more judgement than the natural aristocrat from M’sia Temasek:
Temasek’s Pillay has got his views all mixed up. That Liew has make contributions to Temasek is separate from what he did to the maid. You can praise him for his contributions and that’s fine and should be recognized. But that does’nt exonerate himu from blame and responsibility from his actions in reporting his maid to the police for [w]rong allegations of theft just so to prevent her from reporting him and his son to the MOM for illegally using her for work in his son’s house. Don’t he have any conscience for the suffering and harm he inflicted on his maid just so to save his skins.
Btw, I think Pillay, like a certain minister didn’t do NS.
It shows that its assumed return targets are BS. Fyi, Calpers is the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a major global investor. As of 2018, the agency had U$360 billion in assets.
Before I go further, some defining of terms. From shumething I wrote in 2018
[O]ver the last 10 years, Singapore’s net investment returns (NIR) contribution (NIRC) to the Budget has more than doubled from S$7 billion in FY2009 to an estimated S$15.9 billion in FY2018.
…
Waz this NIRC and NIR BS?
NIRC consists of 50 per cent of the Net Investment Returns (NIR) on the net assets invested by GIC, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Temasek Holdings and 50 per cent of the Net Investment Income (NII) derived from past reserves from the remaining assets.
In other words, we spend 50 per cent of the estimated gains from investment, and put the remaining 50 per cent back into the reserves to preserve its growth for future use.
Associate Professor Randolph Tan is Director of the Centre for Applied Research at the Singapore University of Social Services, and a Nominated Member of Parliament.
Now to why I think we need to know PAP govt’s projected investment returns. In 2016, a reader asked
A Qn: The NIR used for the budget is projected returns. If the projected returns did not materialize, then how? It seemed like insurance agent selling us a policy on projected returns which never materialize.
Am I comprehending the NIR correctly? Because this seemed to me that there might be hefty tax increase down the road if the projected returns did not materialize. This will also affect all the social spending currently on Singaporeans
That is why we need to know the projected Net Investment Returns (NIR) on the net assets invested by GIC, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Temasek Holdings. Remember NIRC — Singapore’s net investment returns (NIR) contribution (NIRC) -consists of 50 per cent of the Net Investment Returns (NIR) and 50 per cent of the Net Investment Income (NII) derived from past reserves from the remaining assets.
For your info this is what ex-TOC star commentator, Chris Kuan (Today, he seems to be too objective for the team running Terry’s Online Channel: they look to be the ST of S’pore’s cyberspace), wrote:
Your reading of the Constitutional NIR rule is correct – the NIR Contribution is calculated on the expected long term real rate of return (LTROR) on the government’s net assets (assets in excess of its liabilities). Pls note it is REAL returns we are talking about – that is the actual dividends and market valuation of the net assets minus the inflation rate. Therefore not all returns are spent. Then the rule limits the spent to 50% – therefore more than half of the actual or nominal returns are re-invested. Again pls note this is nothing unusual, Norway’s GPF and university endowments permit up to 100% of the returns to be spent.
This reminded me that my neighbour and I never got our free hand santisers from Temasek Foundation.
In my case, I never got the pamphlet that would authorise collection. My neighbour got theirs a few days before the cut-off date, but when they went to collect, they were told “No more stock”.
Btw, we have no complaints about the two mask collection exercises.
Maybe Ho Ching should spend less time posting on FB, and more time kicking ass at Temasek Foundation.
S’pore Auntie should know better than hook-up in a sleazy date with a Oz hot bod that goes by the name of Virgin.
Airline Virgin Australia yesterday confirmed it had entered voluntary administration. It’s Australia’s first big corporate casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic.
SIA has a 20% stake. Other shareholders are Richard Branson’s Virgin Group (10%), Etihad, and China’s HNA and Nanshan Group, each with around 20%.
The airline tried to get an A$1.4bn loan from the Oz govt but was told to bugger off because the shareholders had refused to put more cash into the airline, which is loss-making and has net debt of almost A$5bn (U$3.2bn). Another reason apparently was it wasn’t owned by Australians. The eaters of bats and sheep’s head could go stuff themselves.
The airline is now looking for new buyers and investors.
Loss-making food delivery co DoorDash is planning an IPO in the US. Last yr this time, DoorDash raised US$400 million in a round led by Temasek Holdings and Dragoneer Investment Group, at a valuation of US$7.1bn. In August 2018, it was valued at US$4bn.
The expectation is that it’ll ve valued below US$7.1bn. Ho Ho Ho.
Let’s hope Temasek does better in agritech.
Anuj Maheshwari, Temasek’s managing director of agribusiness, recently told the FT: “New and innovative technologies are catalysing revolutions in the agri-food value chain.”
Temasek has funded agritech start-ups such as vertical farm Bowery, cell-based dairy maker Perfect Day, and Nuro, a delivery robotics company.
In July 2018, the FT reported that SoftBank, its Saudi-backed Vision Fund, private equity firms Trustbridge Partners and Hony Capital, and our very own Temasek invested in a WeWork subsidiary in China. It was valued at US$5bn.
A year before, after Softbank and Hony put $ into it, it was worth US$1bn.
Great investment that naturally TOC’s M’sian Indian goons never reported. To be fair neither did other alt media publications. I think our constructive, nation-building trumpeted this investment.
Now?
China has emerged as one of WeWork’s worst performing markets as a local operation once seen as critical to the office provider’s global growth suffers from ultra-low occupancy rates and is “bleeding cash”, said people with direct knowledge of the business.
FT
What “ultra-low occupancy rates” mean. FT reported: WeWork locations in October in
Shanghai had a vacancy rate of 35.7% in October,
Shenzhen 65.3% (in Hong Kong only 22.1% vacant) and
In 2017, Verily secured U$800m from Temasek in exchange for a “minority stake” (Que the usual KPKBing from TOC and other cybernuts). Funny, they very quiet when earlier this year, Silver Lake (tua kee private equity tech investor) and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (tua kee savvy investor) invested US$1bn for “minority stakes” in Verily.
What is Verily?
Verily is Alphabet Inc.’s research organization devoted to the study of life sciences. The organization was formerly a division of Google X, until August 10, 2015, when Sergey Brin announced that the organization would become an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
It is, often through partnerships with healthcare companies or universities, using health data for clues that might predict and prevent diseases. Tools it uses include search, AI, cloud services and other such high tech stuff.
It has struck deals with large pharmaceutical companies (Examples GlaxoSmithKline, Dexcom, Sanofi and J&J) , device makers and research institutions (Think Duke University and Stanford Medicine), offering expertise in machine learning and user experience in exchange for deeper knowledge of medicine and regulation. Sounds a good trade.
I regret my inability to get my points across in the manner I intended and certainly meant no disrespect to our shareholders.
He explained that when talking to FT
about leadership I urged a conversation about the pressing questions of inequality, fairness of executive compensation and the role of corporations. The focus on a single component of pay, which in the case of Standard Chartered had no effect on total compensation, has crowded out this important debate.
Ha, Ha, Ha. Pull the other leg, it’s got bells on it.
The FT helps him out
He bristles at the suggestion that he is overpaid. Although he was Britain’s second-highest-paid bank CEO last year — his total package was almost £6m — he earns a fraction of what he did at JPMorgan. Critics counter that StanChart’s share price has fallen by about 20 per cent since he took over in 2015, versus double-digit gains for competitors HSBC and DBS.
(With friends like the FT who needs enemies?)
The very latest from the FT is that Temasek has told the directors of StanChart to sort the matter out in a way that wins support from the bank’s other large shareholders. FT reports the bank is considering asking its chief executive to take a pay cut.
What? He’ll resign given that he’s paid peanuts (albeit his performance amounts to monkeying around). But maybe that’s what Temasek wants?
The good news is that the accusation comes not from the US marshals that have been making life difficult for the go-to bank for Iran’s activities to by-pass US sanctions, but by whistleblowers in a civil law suit.
StanChart has been accused of handling U$56.8bn of dollars in allegedly illegal transactions with Iran-connected entities in a civil suit. They allege StanChart cleared far more transactions in violation of Iran sanctions between 2009 and 2014 than the US government used as the basis for fines paid by the bank in April (This prediction came true: HoHoHo: StanChart gets into more trouble).
The new claim filed on Thursday piles further legal woes on the emerging markets bank which has been hit with a series of penalties by US law enforcement and regulators in the past seven years for lax financial controls and for handling transactions for companies in Iran and other sanctioned countries.
The FT had a piece on Tuesday in which Bill Winters, the CEO of StanChart, criticised shareholders after almost 40% of them voted against the bank’s pay policy at its annual meeting in May: Temasek stood by him. They were upset about the pension contributions made to Mr Winters.
“Picking on individual pension arrangements . . . and suggesting that there is some big issue there is immature and unhelpful,” the CEO of StanChart KPKBed.
On Wednesday the FT quoted shareholders hitting back.
Five top-20 shareholders (not Temasek with 16% though) in the bank told the FT that they were unimpressed by Mr Winters’ decision to attack shareholders. One big asset manager described the chief executive as “tin eared”.
Another large shareholder said: “As an immature investor, I’m going to not make any rash comments, but look forward to the fallout coming.”
Sounds like what Secret Squirrel told me is true: Temasek has warned him his end is nigh if he can’t improve the bank’s performance soon. So he’s frustrated and angry and hits out unthinkingly.
This outburst can’t help his relations with Temasek as there are now many comments online on FT website pointing out Temasek’s failure to get rid of him.
To be fair to him, his pay is “peanuts”. He got a lot more as a JPMorgan senior executive.
Uber’s shares sank almost 8 per cent below their offer price on Friday, giving the ride-hailing company a disappointing market value of below $70bn — a far cry from the $100bn valuation it had until recently hoped to achieve.
FT today
Meanwhile Lyft which was valued at U$22.4bn at its IPO closing price (up 9% from its offer price). By May 7th, the day it reported results for the first quarter as a public company, it was worth only US$17bn. Lyft’s share price fell by another 11% the next day.
These performances have
left investors questioning the appetite for unprofitable car-booking companies that have relied on a flood of private capital to fund heated expansion and competition.
FT
As Economist says
Both firms have enough cash to continue to burn money for years, but public investors expect a rapid path to profitability. Making it into the black will require either raising prices or reducing the cut of bookings passed on to drivers. The former will be hard; in many markets ride-hailing competes with other cheap modes of transport, such as buses, bicycles and riders’ own cars.
Think Grab and Go-Jek, and Temasek that has invested in them. Grab and Go-Jek are also losing money.
Btw, in 2018 according to an article in the Tiền Phongnewspaper, GIC realised a 60% loss over 4 years after it sold 5.4 million shares in Vietnamese taxi operator Vinasun.
In Apr last year that Bayer, aspirin-to-crop chemicals group, sold 3.6 per cent stake to Temasek for 3 billion euros at 96.77 euros per share. Now worth only 60-something euros a share: not even 65.
Bayer faces problems over legal liabilities stemming from last year’s $63bn acquisition of Monsanto, which included weedkiller products that two US courts have since ruled caused cancer.
FT reports
Any settlement worth about €5bn — still the base case for many analysts who follow Bayer — could be absorbed by the German group without jeopardising its credit rating. Should the cost spiral to €20bn, however, Bayer’s leverage could rise to a level where a cut to the group’s “Baa1” credit rating was necessary, and even a “Baa2” rating could look stretched. Such a scenario could leave the company’s rating just two notches above junk status.
But as aspirin is not available here, maybe she’s have to settle for paracetamol, only 1.5 cents a pill, thanks to SingHealth. (Wannbabe MP doesn’t know paracetamol available here: Need Paracetamol? Ask SingHealth)
Btw, “abc” any idea why Bayer isn’t bringing in aspirin into S’pore? Informal govt ban? It’s easily available in M’sia and Indonesia (place where Bayer makes its aspirin).
Another influential shareholder advisory influencer, Institutional Shareholder Services, has recommended that investors vote against Standard Chartered’s pay policy at its annual meeting next month and described the bank’s method of calculating executive pension allowances as “disingenuous”.
ISS said that investors should cast their ballot against the emerging-markets bank in a binding vote on its pay policy on May 8 because of a change in how it calculates executive pension allowances.
Glass Lewis published a similar recommendation earlier.
Together,Glass Lewis and ISS usually influence over roughly a quarter of votes in any listco: a sizeable number. But Temasek is relaxed about the bank’s pay policy: StanChart mgt think they like PAP ministers isit?
Glass Lewis, a proxy advisory group, recommended that shareholders vote against the company’s pay policy at the coming AGM. The influential advisory group said it was concerned by the bank’s decision to change its methodology for calculating the pensions of executives including chief Bill Winters.
How to? Given our ministers earn so much but their performance is only so-so. Their only credible claim of success is that things have not regressed to the standards of one-party states like Cuba, N Korea, California, New York and Venezuela. Hey what about Vietnam and China? They also one-party states.
Make S’pore Great Again. Summon Harry, Dr Goh, the other Chinese Old Guards and Ahmad Ibrahim. The Indians, other Malays and Eurasians in the Old Guard can remain in their graves.
Too bad Hyflux and DBS (the bank issuing it’s securities) didn’t have in 2016, Temasek as a precedent to follow. Temasek in a letter to ST’s Forum (Ownself praise ownself) talked about its disclosure format for its bonds’ issues in 2018
The question is: Do people read those disclosures? Are they accessible and understandable to a lay reader?
Our research led us to a different approach in respect of our first Temasek Retail Bond.
We took a leaf from the issue of Astrea IV Private Equity Bonds, and made a special effort to provide a more accessible format of risk disclosures via a gatefold.
The gatefold supplemented the offering documents, and was intended to be retail-friendly and easy to understand.
In particular, the gatefold highlighted the associated risks in an accessible manner.
Feedback was very positive on the presentation of pictorials, flowcharts of fund flows, credit ratios and FAQs for both the Astrea IV and Temasek gatefolds.
…
We believe it would be a welcome step if issuers and their advisers consider an accessible style of gatefold, to highlight the key credit risks of their businesses, especially when they issue bond and bond-like offers to retail investors.
Temasek letter to ST’s Forum (Full text below)
Now go tell DBS how to try harder make sure greedy people read: though pigs will surely fly first. Perp investors were warned: Hyflux: Don’t cry for the investors
The letter in full:
Bond issues should be easy to understand for retail investors
Our research showed that Singapore retail investors have very different risk capacities and appetites.
Younger investors look for growth, while older retirees may prefer a steady income stream. Others seek higher risk-reward opportunities.
We believe retail investors should have access to a wider range of risk-reward products, rather than be cut from riskier products through tighter regulations – the current regulations already require comprehensive disclosures of risks.
The question is: Do people read those disclosures? Are they accessible and understandable to a lay reader?
Our research led us to a different approach in respect of our first Temasek Retail Bond.
We took a leaf from the issue of Astrea IV Private Equity Bonds, and made a special effort to provide a more accessible format of risk disclosures via a gatefold.
The gatefold supplemented the offering documents, and was intended to be retail-friendly and easy to understand.
In particular, the gatefold highlighted the associated risks in an accessible manner.
Feedback was very positive on the presentation of pictorials, flowcharts of fund flows, credit ratios and FAQs for both the Astrea IV and Temasek gatefolds.
No two businesses will be the same, and all will have different risk and credit parameters.
We believe it would be a welcome step if issuers and their advisers consider an accessible style of gatefold, to highlight the key credit risks of their businesses, especially when they issue bond and bond-like offers to retail investors.
(Updated on 10 April at 5am: StanChart will pay US and UK authourities US$1.1bn to settle charges that it violated sanctions and ignored red flags about its customers: more than expected. It’s deferred prosecution deal with the US marshals extended until 2021. Ho Ho Ho.)
Standard Chartered is bracing itself for a bumper fine this week that could total hundreds of millions of pounds as it settles US charges over Iranian sanctions violations.
The London-headquartered but Asia-focused bank is expected to draw a line under a long-running investigation into sanctions busting by Wednesday when a six-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with US authorities is set to expire.
DPAs allow firms to settle charges with state authorities without facing criminal prosecution. The companies must agree to specified conditions, which can include a fine and their conduct being monitored for a set period.
Only Indonesia is outpacing India digitally, according to McKinsey.
No wonder Temasek sees a bright future for e-commerce in the region.
In a report in November [2018], Google and … Temasek calculated the value of south-east Asia’s internet economy at $72bn in 2018.
Previous reports by the pair have predicted a regional internet economy worth $200bn by 2025, but last year they raised that projection to closer to $240bn.
“… south-east Asia’s internet economy hit an inflection point in 2018. Powered by the most engaged mobile internet users in the world, industries like ecommerce, online media, online travel and ride-hailing grew at an unprecedented rate,” they wrote.
“Investors have taken notice, pouring record amounts of funds into the region — now it’s time for everyone else to pay attention.”
FT
Temask has stakes in Indonesian start-ups Go-Jek and Warung Pintat (retail tech start-up). Grab where Temasek has an investment is a rival to Go-Jek in Indonesia.
FT reports that StanChart is facing an investor rebellion over its chief executive’s pay after the bank changed how it calculated his pension in a way that falls foul of UK corporate governance guidelines. This comes as executives at the UK’s largest listed banks are being subjected to rising pressure to reduce their pension payments so that they are in line with the majority of staff.
StanChart’s CEO will receive a pension allowance of £474,000, which is the highest of any chief executive of a large UK-listed bank.
But unlike UK investors, Temasek, StanChart’s biggest shareholder, a person close it said it did not share other investors’ concerns on pay at the bank.
(Part of an occasional series “PAP govt really cares for u, really they do” meant to burst the blood vessels of cybernuts like pork-eating, alcohol drinking “bapak”, and tax-dodging grave-dancer “Oxygen”).
A TLC gives 6,400 elderly S’poreans hongpaos each containing $312.5, whether they are Chinese or not.
A computer system error by NCS (owned by SingTel and ultimately by Temasek) caused about 7,700 individuals to receive inaccurate healthcare and intermediate- and long-term care subsidies, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Feb 16).
But those who were overpaid will not have to refund. So that’s a lot of free lunches. Can buy a lot of restaurant or hawker food as each hongpao works out to an average of $312.5.
About 6,400 individuals received higher subsidies than what they are eligible for. The total amount is estimated to be about S$2 million. MOH intends to recover from NCS the costs and expenses incurred as a result of this incident, as allowed for under our contract.
And taz not all
“About 1,300 individuals received lower subsidies than what they are eligible for. The total amount is estimated to be about S$400,000. This will be reimbursed to the affected individuals,” MOH said.
Following Temasek’s recent $6 billion divestment of Ascendas/Singbridge to CapitaLand, CGS-CIMB sees benefits in streamlining the yards and conglomerate structures of Sembcorp (SCI), SembMaritime (SMM) and Keppel (KEP).
“If the rig building industry does not recover in the next three years, we think the consolidation of both SMM and KEP O&M could strengthen Singapore in the large-scale FLNG (KEP) and FPSO (SMM) newbuild segment as well as create an O&M design and engineering powerhouse, competing head-on with the Koreans.”
‘A possible structure is one mega yard (SMM + KEP O&M), one renewables/utility group Sembcorp Industries (SCI) and one urbanisation/infrastructure group (KEP).”
It thinks Sembcorp could be the long-term winner as a pure renewable energy/utility group focusing on overseas M&A to grow its capacity, commanding higher valuations. Brokers forever flogging this dog.
Meanwhile, it thinks, Keppel could continue to pursue its urbanisation solutions of property and infrastructure development, backed by asset management capital.
The total book value of SembMaritime and Keppel O&M amount to S$5.3 billion. The hypothetical shareholding structure of the enlarged yard could be in the form of a JV, with Temasek having a majority control stake, the broker says.
CGS-CIMB has Keppel, Sembcorp and SembMarine at “add” with target prices of S$8.41, S$3.49 and S$2.46 respectively.
I’m happy with the present Keppel set-up as there’s no guarantee that it’s O&M managers will run the joint show. SembMarine’s O&M managers are second rate by Keppel’s standards.
But the gd news is that FT reported recently that Temasek had very recently told the mgt that it was not happy. I wrote last October HoHoHo: Time for StanChart’s CEO to go?. Shumeone in Temasek reads me? Ho Ho Ho
Have a prosperous and Happy Chinese New Year. To ensure this vote wisely. And certainly not for Mad Dog, Lim Tean and Meng Seng . But do think of voting for good SDP teams if they are better than the PAPpies.
There’s an FT report that Temasek is putting pressure on StanChart to shape up. It’s tired of being reminded that under the current CEO, the share price has fallen 40%. Worse, share price is roughly at half of Temasek’s entry point 13 years ago.
Temasek forgot when it bot into StanChart that StanChart did not and still does not have have a major, thriving, prosperous market that it dominates.
Although it’s smaller than the supertanker of HSBC, it doesn’t have the engine of Hong Kong that HSBC does, so it’s taking every bit as long, if not longer, to reform. But we’re still very supportive.
(Hugh Young, head of Asia Pacific at Aberdeen Standard Investments, which holds a stake of about 5 per cent in the bank talking to the FT)
GST sure to go up leh. Jialat for PAP govt and us.
Ex-Standard Chartered banker prepares to plead guilty in Iran case
Emerging markets lender under investigation for alleged sanctions breaches
FT headline
Goes on
Although no formal charges have been brought, an internal Standard Chartered investigation found at least one of the bankers under scrutiny was receiving secret kickback payments, one of the people said.
If the ex-employee does plead guilty, it would be one of the few instances of an individual banker being successfully prosecuted in the US over sanctions abuses.
Depending on what the former employee says in any plea deal, an admission of guilt could put Standard Chartered in a weaker position in its negotiations with regulators and enforcement officials, who are seeking to impose fines of as much as $1.5bn on the bank, the people said.
So why GST sure to go up?
The potential fine could complicate the bank’s plan to return capital to investors for the first time in a generation, details of which the bank would like announce alongside its strategy update and full-year results at the end of February, according to people briefed on the proposal.
Ho Ho Ho.
Fyi, over the last 10 years, Singapore’s net investment returns (NIR) contribution (NIRC) to the Budget has more than doubled from S$7 billion in FY2009 to an estimated S$15.9 billion in FY2018.
NIRC consists of 50 per cent of the Net Investment Returns (NIR) on the net assets invested by GIC, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Temasek Holdings and 50 per cent of the Net Investment Income (NII) derived from past reserves from the remaining assets.
In other words, we spend 50 per cent of the estimated gains from investment, and put the remaining 50 per cent back into the reserves to preserve its growth for future use.
Associate Professor Randolph Tan is Director of the Centre for Applied Research at the Singapore University of Social Services, and a Nominated Member of Parliament.
And for HSBC and JPMorgan Citibank. This trio are the biggest players in the trading financing biz and there’s plenty of biz to finance.
There was a US$1.5tn gap in financing needs for international trade transactions in 2017.according to Alisa DiCaprio, head of research at R3 and formerly an economist at the Asian Development Bank.
“We are feeling the pains of restructuring, but not yet seeing the dividends of our hard work. But we are pursuing all the right strategies, and I am confident that given time these strategies will work for us.”
smacks of “Jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day”
Pardon my cynicism.
We’ve been here before. How many times has economy been “restructured” since the 80s? And how many times have SMEs been helped to “restructure and tide through challenging times”?”
Well it seems that StanChart is taking a leaf from it’s largest shareholder. This is the FT’s headline
Standard Chartered promises new plan to boost profitability
Lender’s new strategy will mean further job cuts as it aims to become a simpler bank
Well after three years of a turnround plan, however, there’ll be a new plan next yr.
chief executive Bill Winters has done a poor job of preserving shareholder value — never mind building some — since he joined just over three years ago. The shares are down 40 per cent.
Ideas are only ever as good as their implementation.
Btw, talking about execution in Capitalism in America: A History, by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, talking about men like Carnegie, Rockefeller,
“These great entrepreneurs earned their place in history not by inventing new things but by organizing them.”
Here’s a comment about the book, “Three themes are highlighted — productivity as the measure of economic progress; the “Siamese twins of creation and destruction” as the sources of productivity growth; and the political reaction to the consequences of creative destruction”
This headline in our constructive, nation-building media on Monday
Mandai mangrove and mudflats to be Singapore’s newest nature park
reminded of a BBC story a few months back headlined
Singapore’s Mandai eco-resort: Paving paradise to put up an eco-resort
Singaporeans are getting a new wildlife paradise to bring them closer to nature, but as the BBC’s Yvette Tan writes, the development is carving into the jungle and pushing rare animals into the path of danger.
Animals are getting killed to create a new wildlife paradise
Five animals – including a leopard cat, a huge sambar deer, a wild boar and a critically endangered sunda pangolin – have become roadkill since development began last January. All the accidents took place in the area around Mandai – with two occurring on a busy expressway.
This reminded me of two US military operations in the Vietnam War :
— “Did we have to destroy the town in order to save it?” Colonel Myron Harrington was a US Marine officer at the Battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive. The battle resulted in the destruction of the town and the killing of its residents. Harrington is credited with the quotation “Did we have to destroy the town in order to save it?”
— “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” This has been attributed to an unnamed United States major, referring to the bombing of Ben Tre, South Vietnam; reported by AP correspondent Peter Arnett, “Major Describes Move”, New York Times (February 8, 1968).
Coming back to the Mandai project, Mandai Park Development (MPD) says
the resort, to be run by resort operator Banyan Tree, will be built “sensitively… to reduce impact to the environment”.
But Mr Subaraj, a self-styled conservation expert (I know he has no academic or formal credentials in this field, but I also know he’s passionate about local wildlife)
argues that this may not be enough.
“If you look in other countries, for example [at an eco-resort in] the Danum Valley in Malaysia, they’ve got around 30 rooms,” said Mr Subaraj.
“We’ve got up to 400 rooms. When you develop a resort that big, no matter how much mitigation you put in place, there will be an impact.”
In other words, the development is akin to building a HDB block of flats as opposed to a jungle hut.
Btw
MPD is a branch of Mandai Park Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore’s state investor – Temasek Holdings.
🤑
Btw2, MPD
the body behind the work, says developing the area into an eco-hub is a much more “environmentally sensitive” choice than if an urban development were to take over the area.
Another one for the repair shop is UK-listed Standard Chartered. After damaging revelations about the bank breaching US-led sanctions against doing business with Iran, it had already paid a $667m fine to avoid criminal charges in 2012. This week another $1.5bn in fines from US authorities was highlighted after allegations that the bank continued to defy certain sanctions. Even without the added headache, Lex adjudged that chief executive Bill Winters has done a poor job of preserving shareholder value — never mind building some — since he joined just over three years ago. The shares are down 40 per cent.
Emphasis mine. FT’s Letter from Lex summarising it’s article that’s behind a pay wall.
Time for Temasek, the controlling shareholder, to talk to other top 10 shareholders about removing him? Pigs will fly first. The CEO that ran the bank into the ground was kicked out because another top 10 shareholder,Aberdeen Asset Mgt, as it then was, organised a campaign against him.
But then Temasek’s paper general CEOs would also have to go if they are judged by best practices ang moh private sector standards,
FT reported that US prosecutors have told StanChart that they are preparing to bring criminal charges against two of the bank’s former employees over alleged sanction breaches involving Iran-linked companies.
S’poreans have few good things to say about our paper generals and scholars: think SPH’s CEO and ex-SMRT’s CEO.
Well StanChart’s CEO, a true blue ang moh life long banker, makes these guys look good.
When Bill Winters became the Messiah CEO of StanChart in June 2015, the bank’s shares were around £10. Now they are around £6. He was brought in because the previous CEO had run the bank into the ground. The bank overextended, trying to take advantage of other banks’ problems. Unlike them it had a great time during the financial crisis.
Well Winters failed. The shares have dropped about 37%, while Bloomberg’s global banking index has gained 47%.
US$2.3m, was what CapitaLand’s subsidiary, Raffles Holding, a painting for in 2005. Now it’s worth US$65m and rumoured to be heading to The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar.
A work by Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) that hung in Raffles City for years and yrs (commissioned by I M Pei the architect of the place and of the Doha Museum) was sold by Raffles Holdings, a subsidiary of Capitaland, via Christie’s HK for US$2.3m in May 2005.
Same work sold at a world record price of US$65m (a record for a ZWK painting) on 30 Sept via Sotheby’s HK.
But before Chris K gets worked up on CapitaLand’s or scholars’ incompetence, the piece was sold by public auction both times. The art buyers voted with their wallets both times round.
But somehow, I don’t think that this fact will register with the anti-PAPpies, sane or nutty. So wait for Phillip Ang, the cybernuts go-to financial expert to KPKB about Ho Ching’s, CapitaLand’s or scholars’ incompetence or worse. (Btw, whatever happened to his and Lim Tean’s sue CPF class action? They raised money and then kept quiet? CPF class action: Phillip Ang’s “reply’ to fellow cybernut.Related post: Will Lim Tean & Phillip Ang help out fellow cybernut?)
Whatever, it would be nice if we had retained the art piece in one of our public galleries: after all it hung in a public space in Raffles City. But I’m sure the anti-PAP Tamils and Malays would say it’s “Too Cina”. And that it that shows the PAP’s Chinese chauvinism and bias against minority races.
StanChart hasn’t been able to clean up its dirty linen despite a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in which it admitted secretly moving billions of dollars through the U.S. on behalf of Iranian clients, in violation of sanctions.
As part of the DPA, the bank agreed to have an outside, independent monitor to scrutinize its business practices and the U.S. agreed to eventually dismiss charges once the bank has complied. A failure to comply would typically allow prosecutors to reopen the case.
The DPA has been extended multiple times, including as recently as this summer, and will now run until the end of 2018. Authorities said the bank’s sanctions-compliance program “has not yet reached the standard required.”
Naturally the price came off when the mkts heard this. Ho Ho Ho
In Man that should be running SMRT,I wrote about the ang moh running the MRT system in the world’s greatest global city, New York. He has always worked in public transport and has always taken public transport to work be it in London, Toronto, Sydney or NY.
As mentioned in the piece, he’s no Oxbridge or Ivy League type. In an article, I read after doing the above piece, he tells of the times when as a junior manager in charge of a station in London’s MRT system, he was treated like dirt whenever he had to go HQ to meet the senior managers.
Btw, by GCT’s standard he is Goh Chok Tong’s standard, he is “very mediocre”: he earns only US$325,000 a year. He took the NY job because it was a challenge bhe couldn’t resist. The salary was close to his previous job.
Supermarket chain Sheng Siong, ground-services provider SATS, ComfortDelgro, SIA Engineering and ST Engineering say DBS. Can’t argue with these at this time, especially the TLCs and the GLC.
With a host of risk factors, including fresh trade-related jitters, threatening to cause more pain for local equities, analysts say it’s time for investors to seek shelter in defensive plays.
“We advocate investors to reposition into defensive stocks, using the rebound in July to pare exposure to cyclical names,” said DBS Group Research analysts Yeo Kee Yan and Janice Chua.
These will be stocks that are not closely linked to the economic cycle, while having a healthy level of cash, decent growth of about 5 per cent ahead and a consistent and satisfactory level ofdividend payouts.
But buying Reits? Taz another analyst suggesting.
Now I’m still up to my eyeballs in Reits. But even I consider them higher risk stuff because they pay out most of their income. Btw, I’ve never been into retail Reits.
On Tuesday (London time), StanChart reported half-year operating income of US$7.6bn, 6% more than in the same period last year. The stock dropped 3.5% trading because operating income was below expectations. Blame higher IT spending: costs in general have outgrown revenues by a whole percentage point. Not good.
FT’s Lex
StanChart investors must be counting on costs soon falling, relative to revenues. The hope should be for a leaner and cleaner bank ready to grow at the bottom of the next cycle.
adding
Shares in HSBC, another London-listed bank with an Asian focus, have climbed 63 per cent in the past two years, compared to 13 per cent at StanChart.
Standard Chartered (STAN.L) has agreed to a further extension of its U.S. deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) until the end of December this year, it said on Friday.
StanChart entered the DPA with the U.S. Department of Justice and New York County District Attorney’s Office in December 2012, accepting that it had broken laws by processing payments for sanctions targets in countries including Iran, Burma, Sudan and Libya.
The bank avoided prosecution in exchange for a cash settlement of $327 million and an agreement with the U.S. authorities to improve its sanctions compliance.
…
The DPA was extended for three years in 2014 and a further nine months in November 2017 as StanChart sought to strengthen its controls under the scrutiny of an independent monitor.
When Temasek released its details, TOC, it seems, tried to cast aspersions on Temasek’s results by pointing that its auditor KPMG was in the UK’s authorities’ dog house for the quality of its audits in the UK.
The UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is an independent regulator responsible for promoting high quality corporate governance and reporting to foster investment in UK. Its board of directors is appointed by the UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. FRC plays a crucial role in the oversight and development of corporate governance standards such as the UK Corporate Governance Code and standards for the accounting industry.
UK FRC said that KPMG audits had shown an “unacceptable deterioration” and will be subject to closer supervision.
Every year, the UK FRC reviews the audits of Britain’s biggest companies to ensure they meet certain standards. The FRC noted problems at other auditing firms too, but KPMG was specially singled out for the poor quality of its work.
“There has been an unacceptable deterioration in quality at one firm, KPMG,” the FRC said in a statement …
Terry’s Online Channel
As OCBC is also audited by KPMG, is TOC also casting aspersions on OCBC’s results?
Seriously, TOC doesn’t tell that all the big four accountancy firm are in the sights of the UK’s authorities:
The UK’s top banking and insurance supervisor has said he is worried about the quality of audits by the Big Four accountancy firms. Sam Woods, the chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, told the Treasury select committee on Wednesday that it was “a bit of a worry” that the Financial Reporting Council rebuked the four firms* — Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG — last month for a fall in quality, particularly in banking audits. Stephen Haddrill, the FRC’s chief executive, said at the time that “the Big Four must improve the qualify of their audits and do so quickly”. The FRC attributed the deterioration in quality to a failure to challenge management and show appropriate scepticism across their audits.
FT
And that despite all this KPKBing, when Goldman Sachs Int’l tried to appoint a non-big four auditor Grant Thorton to audit it, replacing a big four auditor, the UK authorities raised an eyebrow on whether Grant Thorton can do the job. The matter is ongoing.
All this is a matter of public record, yet TOC in what seems to be an attempt to slime Temasek left out inconvenient facts.
Looks like TOC is going the way of the Idiots S’pore or is it Indian S’pore?
Sad for someone who helped out at TOC.
*TOC said only KPMG was singled out, remember: “KPMG was specially singled out for the poor quality of its work”?
Use of public transport is in decline in many wealthy cities. Blame remote working, Uber, cheap car loans and the internet. That’s what reported recently in the PAP’s bible*: https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/23/public-transport-is-in-decline-in-many-wealthy-cities
So maybe when the PAP administration decided to cut back SMRT maintenance all those yrs ago, they were way ahead of the curve and got biten by reality? Sometimes thinking long term is bad for everyone. It’s also mud in the eye for The PAP way is the American corporate way.
Xiaomi, the [US]$100bn Chinese smartphone and TV unicorn? It’s now a $50bn unicorn after it decided to cancel plans for a Chinese depositary receipts issuance.
FT on Wed/ Thurs
This is the latest twist in a tale that will have cybernuts happy again that Temask and GIC always losing money.
Oh and Xiaomi has juz launched an IPO to raise US$6.1bn (amended from US$6bn). It had planned to raise US$10bn but the cancellation of its Chinese depositary receipts issuance made that impossible.
Whatever, the cybernuts will never accept that Temasek and GIC made money on this investment. The changes in the valuation reflect the difficult of valuing an unlisted investment, especially a tech company.
Fortunately for the PAP govt and S’porean footie fans, it’s in Oz.
[F]or Optus, Australia’s second-biggest telecoms company, the 2018 Fifa World Cup is fast becoming a public relations disaster.
On Monday the Singtel-owned operator, which holds the streaming rights to all 64 matches, voluntarily handed its television rival SBS the rights to broadcast the following two nights of world cup action. It made the decision following a consumer backlash prompted by technical difficulties with its own streaming services- and a public intervention by Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister.
When Hainan Airlines, HNA’s flagship carrier and HNA’s main cash generator, earlier this week, said it would sell up to 20% of its Shanghai listed shares to 10 investors among whom was one Temasek Holdings, cybernuts were screaming “Sure to lose money”.
Well they might like to know that China is leaning hard on its banks to support troubled HNA’s refinancing activities.
A person familiar with HNA’s investment in Deutsche Bank said the German lender saw the call to support the bond issue as positive. “It’s not a bailout but support in financing, absolutely different to Anbang.”
FT
So a stake in HNA’s crown jewels, Hainan Airlines, sounds a good deal.
Whatever, with enemies like Phillip Ang (cybernuts go-to person for financial advice and analysis on our SWFs) and Uncle Leong, the PAP govt doesn’t need friends like Fabrications About the PAP or Calvin Cheng. Sad.
A few yrs ago the cybernuts were celebrating the purported losses that Xiaomi were costing GIC and Temasek. (Btw, interesting that so called patriotic S’poreans, think tax-dodging Oz resident Oxygen and S’pore-based Phillip Ang love to celebrate losses that our SWFs make: maybe taz why they are cybernuts? What do you think?)
Double confirm: Paper general made Temasek and other NOL shareholders poorer too.
Not that Ho Ho Ho or other S’porean decision makers seem to care. Good luck SPH shareholders.
More evidence that NOL was sold when the cycle was about to turn &Sale completed in mid 2016).
Deutsche Bank is turning positive on Asia Pacific’s shipping sector with the strongest preference for the container sub-segment, followed by tanker and dry bulk.
This comes on the belief that industry conditions have now fundamentally turned, with the peak in deliveries of mega vessels and the recent acceleration of industry consolidation in recent years, which in turn means operators have the potential to achieve stronger price discipline.
As Desmond Kwek’s successor, instead of another scholar and general as reported by ST, the PAP administration should try to recruit Andy Byford who has worked in some tough MRT systems (London, Sydney and Toronto) and has a record of success in the MRT field. So much so that New York turned to him to do something about its system.
He is a MRT man to his bones: all his jobs involve trains.
Better still he personally checks the system daily: he takes the MRT to and from work. When was the last time Desmond or any other CEO or presumptive CEO took the MRT to work?
And finally, he personally apologises for delays. A Ferrari driving FT MD of SMRT said commuters had a choice not to use her trains if they were unhappy. Even the PAPpies found this too much to stomach.
But he’s no Oxbridge or Ivy League man, so our system discounts him immediately.
He made a name for himself running transport systems in London, Sydney and Toronto. Now Briton Andy Byford is in charge of turning around New York’s ageing, failing subway system. What did he get himself into?
About 400,000 people pass through the Bloor-Yonge subway station every day in Toronto, Canada’s largest city.
And on a summer’s day in 2013, the city’s transport chief Andy Byford tried to apologise to every one of them.
Earlier in the day, water damage had caused a signal failure, delaying trains from rush hour that morning until early afternoon.
Walking up and down the platform, Byford tried to apologise in person to harried commuters while a recording of him formally apologising played on a loop on the station’s loudspeaker.
FT reported that the Saudi Public Investment Fund was is in talks to invest as much as U$400m in Magic Leap at a $6bn valuation even though the start-up has yet to even put one of its augmented reality glasses on the market. Temasek invests in Magic
DoorDash has raised $535 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, GIC of Singapore and Sequoia Capital for a $1.4 billion valuation. (Recode)
Soon, Temasek will be contributing a bit more to the Budget.
“StanChart restarts dividends as profit returns” is the FT’s headline on the turnaround in StanChart. It stopped paying dividends several years ago.
And there’s still plenty of room for it to improve
[D]espite stellar economic growth in Asia, which accounts for over two-thirds of underlying pre-tax profit, the group is still destroying economic value. Return on equity, at 1.7 percent or 3.5 percent excluding exceptional items, is still far below the group’s cost of equity, which is probably more like 10 percent. Costs are rising, even as the group clamps down on loan losses.
After years of retrenchment, Winters needs turbocharged revenue growth and restraint on costs to hit his modest medium-term target for an ROE of 8 percent. Suppose operating costs grow just 2 percent annually, with flat loan losses and restructuring charges and taxes at 30 percent. StanChart would need 7 percent annual revenue growth to fulfil its aim by 2020, according to a Breakingviews calculation. That is more than double last year’s rate and at the top of the bank’s projected 5 to 7 percent range.
But Harry a wannabe P&G, the giant (but sleepy) American consumer goods company.
From NYT’s Dealbook:
Harry’s raises $112 million to go beyond shaving
Since its founding nearly five years ago, the men’s grooming company has become an competitor to Procter & Gamble’s Gillette. Now its founders want to create what they describe as a next-generation P. & G.
The company’s new financing round, led by Alliance Consumer Growth and Temasek of Singapore, is meant to help it buy stakes in nascent consumer brands. Harry’s has already invested in Hims, which is focused on men’s hair loss prevention. But its founders want to go into products for women, babies and households.
More from Michael’s article:
“We’ve built a lot of infrastructure at Harry’s that we think we can leverage into new categories,” Jeff Raider, one of Harry’s founders, said in a telephone interview. “It’s something that we’ve been excited about for a long time, and we’re now at a point in our business where we can act on it.”
Years ago, Temasek (along with big private equity firms KKR and Sequioa) invested in Indonesian unicorn Go-Jek. The company provides ride-hailing, food delivery and e-payment services.
Well now, Google has invested in Go-Jek as it seeks to further tap Indonesia’s growing internet economy. Google said on Monday it had chosen to invest in Go-Jek as “there was still more we can do to support and participate in Indonesia’s growth”, noting the country is home to the world’s fifth-largest population of internet users. It did not disclose the size of the investment.
In fact, Temasek (and GIC) like other professionally run SWFs (Think the Arabs but not the Chinese. Think the Chinese investment in Noble House that will be almost wipewd out.) often get investments more right than wrong.
In 2016, when China as a country grew at close to 7 per cent, StanChart’s revenue across greater China and north Asia declined by 15 per cent. While Southeast Asia GDP grew by nearly 5 per cent, StanChart’s revenue there shrank by 5 per cent. And in Africa and the Middle-East, another fast-growing region, the bank’s revenue was down 4 per cent. StanChart’s full-year numbers for 2017 have yet to be published, but at the last count its ROE was running at about 5 per cent …
Xiaomi is laying the groundwork for its planned float in the second half of this yr as it appoints banks for a planned US$100bn IPO.
This make make our anti-PAPyists who are PRC lovers bang their balls really hard
It wasn’t that long ago when anti-PAPpyists (nutty and sane) were KPKBing that both our SWFs lost billions after investing in Xiaomei: http://www.theindependent.sg/gics-and-temaseks-investee-company-xiaomi-lost-40-billion-in-value/
Bear in mind that the above piece was not written by a cybernut but by someone who while sane didn’t have a clue about investing.
Xiaomi, which was valued at more than US$45bn in its last funding round three years ago, went through a difficult period last year that burnt through its cash. But it appears to have turned a corner in the middle of last year.
(FT a few days ago)
FT went on that the co made a:
significant recovery from January last year, when a humbled Mr Lei wrote in a memo posted on his WeChat account and on Facebook: “A few years ago, we rushed too fast, achieving a miracle in the history of modern business growth, but we also overspent a portion of our growth. We must slow down and earnestly learn from our mistakes. Prevention is better than having to fix things later.”
Chief TRE cybernut, Oxygen (He made a $10,000 donation to TRE in 2015 and still holds on to his S’pore citizenship thus being unable to take out his CPF monies, showing how much he privately trusts the PAP, despite criticising the PAP publicly), has called for Keppel shareholders to sue, ranting
The $55 million given to corrupt Brazilian officials are money/property belonging to the shareholders of Keppel Corp. The injured party and proper plaintiff is Keppel Corp whose current Board is legally obligated under corporate law to take action to recover the lost property.
If the current Board of Directors failed to take action to recover this loss property rightfully belonging to its shareholders , the shareholders of Keppel Corp – which Temasek Holdings is said to own 20% equity stake – has same unfettered right of action on behalf of itself and all other shareholders via the derivative action of exceptions to the Foss v Harbottle case law application.
The concept of the exception to the corporate case law application of the Foss vs Harbottle rule is illuminated in this wikipedia link.
It remains to seen if Temasek Holdings will sue the Board of Directors of Keppel Corp if the latter does nothing and pretend nothing happens.
Oxygen
Will Lim Tean and his sidekick, Phillip Ang, open another POSB account and ask retail Keppel shareholders to put $ in so that these fund raisers can buy Ferraris that funds can be raised to sue Keppel?
This is what they did for the CPF law suit:
Lim Tean and I have set up a crowdfunding account @https://www.facebook.com/tean.lim.75. (POSB Savings 198-91842-3) Please keep a record of your transaction as your particulars will be required before the launch of the class-action suit. Unused portion will also be returned, pari passu.
Later after the money poured in (OK or didn’t), Phillip Ang blogged
Once the required resources, not just financially, are in place and before the suit is launched, there will be more updates. Action speaks louder than words.
PM and wife may be on hols but MUFG and Temasek have just done a deal that hopefully (Indon regulators willing) would see the Japanese bank acquiring a 73.8% stake in Bank Danamon from its largest existing shareholder, Temasek (Temasek wants to be rid of it’s stake after the Indons blocked a merger with DBS Indonesia.)
the Japanese bank will buy 19.9 percent from Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings [TEM.UL] for 15.875 trillion rupiah ($1.17 billion), a deal it expected to close within a few days.
MUFG will then raise the stake to 40 percent, pending regulatory approval, between the second and third quarters of 2018.
MUFG said after that, it sought approval to hold at least 73.8 percent in Indonesia’s fifth-largest bank by offering to buy out other shareholders in addition to acquiring shares from Temasek.
Cybernuts beware. PAP could use Magic tool in next GE to project light directly into voters’ eyes to trick their brains into perceiving virtual objects as part of their surrounding environment.
Magic Leap has unveiled the first version of its augmented reality system to be made public.
The Magic Leap One Creator Edition is designed to project light directly into users’ eyes to trick their brains into perceiving virtual objects as part of their surrounding environment.
It consists of a large pair of goggles that wrap around the head, a body-worn computer and a wireless controller.
The firm has raised close to $1.9bn (£1.4bn) from investors.
The Florida-based company’s biggest backers include Google, the Chinese tech giant Alibaba and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek.
Since 2010 global trade has, by and large, shown only lacklustre growth. Once expected to grow regularly at 1.5-2 times global gross domestic product, trade has been growing at, or even below, the rate of broader economic output in recent years, prompting some to proclaim the end of an era of “hyperglobalisation”.
This year is expected to be the best in recent history for global trade. The WTO in September upgraded its forecast for world trade growth, predicting it would expand by 3.6 per cent in 2017. That is largely the result of a better global economy. For the first time since the crisis all of the world’s major economies are in relatively rude health.
FT
Don’t overleverage in property
But the recovery in global trade remains far from a boom and there are still plenty of signs of fragility.
FT again
And yes the scholar and SAF general now running SPH screwed up big time when in ran NOL. selling it when the cycle was turning.
Scholar and ex-SAF commander is so useless that Khaw, Temasek and SMRT thinks he needs more supervision, a lot more.
It’s not me or angry commuters or the anti-PAP mob saying this. It’s the constructive, nation-building media reporting comments by Temasek, SMRT and Khaw.
Here’s how MediaCorp reported the story. ST’s report is along similar lines so maybe there was a dictator dictating the narrative?
Temasek-backed Pavilion Energy’s CEO Seah Moon Ming will step down to focus on his role as chairman of train operator SMRT.
CNA
That shows that Temasek thinks he needs more supervision.
And so does SMRT because
In a separate media release, SMRT said it is “pleased” that when Mr Seah took on the chairmanship in July this year, he had planned to prioritise more time in the role.
“Under the guidance of Mr Seah and our board, SMRT remains focused on delivering key initiatives such as asset renewal efforts, while it continues its multi-year effort to strengthen management, operations and maintenance teams, and build robust engineering and operational capabilities for future needs,” SMRT said.
“The board, CEO and management of SMRT welcome the opportunity to work even more closely with Mr Seah from Feb 1 2018.”
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 