GIC, Temasek & MAS 01 (May 08 - Aug 09)

[winston]

Singapore buys $400 mln stake in energy infrastructure firm

SINGAPORE, May 13 (Reuters) - Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC) has bought an 11 percent stake in U.S.-based energy infrastructure firm AEI for $400 million, a spokeswoman for the Singapore sovereign fund said on Tuesday.

GIC Special Investments, the fund's private equity arm, purchased the shares from AEI and some of its shareholders, AEI said in a statement on its website http://www.aeienergy.com. A GIC nominee has been appointed to AEI's board.

AEI, a privately held firm, owns and runs energy infrastructure businesses in several emerging markets including China, Mexico and Argentina.

GIC is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds with assets estimated to be in excess of $300 billion.

[kennynah]

despite some seemingly poor investments made, i feel that singapore has to invest her reserves outside of singapore...just like individuals must invest to grow savings.

who doesnt use energy? energy infrastructure is a good bet...like betting on Visa..a financial transaction infrastructure provider

[winston]

UPDATE 1-Singapore's GIC says subprime hurting Asia property

SINGAPORE, May 15 (Reuters) - The real estate arm of sovereign wealth fund the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC) said on Thursday that the U.S. subprime crisis is beginning to hurt Asian property markets such as Japan and Australia.

"The contagion effects of the subprime crisis can potentially accelerate the downward spin of the current property cycle," Seek Ngee Huat, the president of GIC Real Estate, said in a speech at a property industry conference.

"Some market weakening is being sensed in Asia, particularly in Japan and in Australia." The comments came after Dubai World, the investment firm of the Dubai government, told Reuters last month the U.S. subprime housing crisis has slowed its investment decisions this year, but it is still holding on to U.S. real estate assets.

GIC, estimated to be the world's third-largest sovereign wealth fund with $330 billion in assets, is also ranked among the world's top 10 property investors, owning buildings such as Merrill Lynch's London office and Westin Paris.

GIC's Seek said that he sees opportunities amid the subprime wreckage, but added there would be competition from other institutional players.

"As always weak markets favour those with the capacity to take strategic positions, and so the subprime meltdown presents threats as well as opportunites," he said.

He said GIC started out investing in developed markets and only started to focus on emerging markets in Asia in the mid-1990s.

Singapore, which saw private home prices jump 31 percent in 2007 in the largest rise in eight years, is witnessing a slowdown as sales volumes slumped in the first quarter to the lowest since the 2003 SARS epidemic.

The Singapore government's moves to cool the property market, by ending a scheme that allowed delayed payments, coupled with the impact of a global slowdown, have already hit the bottomline of developers CapitaLand and Keppel Land .

[winston]

Hmmm... maybe they have been reading our "Other investment regions" :p

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S'pore's Temasek eyes investments in Mexico, Brazil

(Repeats with no change to text) By Saeed Azhar SINGAPORE, May 28 (Reuters) - Singapore state investor Temasek [TEM.UL] on Wednesday announced plans to boost its presence in Brazil and Mexico to tap growth in Latin America's powerful emerging economies.

The move underscores the state investment firm's recent focus outside its core Asian market, which excluding Japan accounted for 78 percent of its S$164 billion portfolio ($120.5 billion) last year.

Temasek, headed by Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, also made high profile investments in Western banks such as Merrill Lynch and Barclays in 2007.

The Singapore firm said that it has hired Lorenzo Gonzalez Bosco, former chief executive of Barclays Bank in Mexico, as its new managing director for investment in that country and will relocate Alan Thompson, its managing director for investment in Latin America, to Sao Paulo, Brazil later this year.

"We believe the Latin American region holds long-term potential and offers attractive investment prospects," the statement quoted its Chief Investment Officer Tow Heng Tan as saying. "We will look seriously at opportunities that may arise, but we also do not seek to target any specific investment amount of capital within any given timeframe." With a combined gross domestic product of US$3.3 trillion and economic growth of 5.2 percent last year, Latin America is home to some of the world's strongest economies, the statement said.

Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies in this region, accounted for 70 percent of the region's GDP.

U.S. SLOWDOWN Temasek is eyeing Latin America at a time when the region's economies face a potential slowdown due to its proximity to the United States.

World Bank's vice president for Latin America, Pamela Cox, said earlier this month that growth for the region this year should be "more or less" 4.5 percent. Her last estimate of 4.8 percent was given to Reuters in April and was lower than a previous forecast of 5.1 percent.

She said the economic slowdown in the United States threatens to hit Mexico and Central America hardest because of their integration with the U.S. market.

Temasek is taking a leap outside Asia following recent political and regulatory obstacles for its investments in Asia in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia.

Earlier this month an Indonesian court ordered Temasek and its affiliates to sell one of its two Indonesian telecoms units, upholding an earlier ruling by the country's anti-trust body.

[iam802]

Barclays to Raise $8.9 Billion in Share Sale; Qatar, Temasek Will Invest

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... efer=home#

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June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc, Britain's fourth-biggest bank, plans to sell 4.5 billion pounds ($8.9 billion) of stock mostly to investors in the Middle East and Asia to boost capital depleted by credit-related writedowns.

Barclays rose as much as 6.4 percent in London trading, the biggest gain in two months, after the London-based bank said in a statement it will offer 1.58 billion new shares to investors including institutions in Qatar, Singapore, China and Japan.

While half the new money will be used to bolster Barclay's capital after financial institutions worldwide wrote down $399 billion dollars linked to subprime-mortgage losses, the rest will be used for ``business opportunities out there,'' including acquisitions, Chief Executive Officer John Varley told reporters.

``We expect the longer-term growth prospects of the company to be higher than its domestic U.K. peers,'' Merrill Lynch analyst John-Paul Crutchley wrote in a note to clients today. He has an ``underperform'' rating on the stock.

Barclays rose as much as 19.75 pence and traded up 5.9 percent to 329 pence at 9 a.m., valuing the bank at 21.6 billion pounds. The shares are down 35 percent this year, underperforming the eight-member FTSE All-Share Banks Index, which fell 27 percent.

Barclays will offer shares to Challenger, a company representing Qatar's royal family, Qatar Investment Authority, Temasek Holdings Pte, China Development Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc.

Sumitomo will buy 500 million pounds of new stock at 296 pence a share. Barclays's individual investors will be able to ``claw back'' the additional 4 billion pounds of shares that overseas and institutional investors have agreed to buy at 282 pence apiece.

Discount

By finding overseas investors to guarantee proceeds of the share sale, Barclays isn't relying on investment banks to underwrite the offering. Credit Suisse Group and JPMorgan Cazenove are working with Barclays Capital as joint brokers on the sale.

Barclays's offer of 500 million pounds to Sumitomo is priced at a 4.7 percent discount to the bank's closing share price yesterday. The rights offering of 4 million pounds is priced at a 9.25 percent discount to yesterday's close of 310.75 pence a share. Current investors will be able to buy three new shares for every 14 shares they own.

`Better Way'

``It's probably a better way to raise the money than some of the other rights issues,'' said Leigh Goodwin, an analyst at Fox- Pitt Kelton Ltd. in London who has an ``in-line'' rating on the stock. ``It will be interesting to see if people have confidence,'' he said.

British banks face slower growth amid higher funding costs and rising defaults as house prices fall at the fastest rate since the recession of the 1990s. The credit-market freeze has halted sales of mortgage-backed securities, which lenders including HBOS and Bradford & Bingley Plc use to fund property loans. Banks have raised about $304 billion to help cover losses since the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market.

The share offering will enable Barclays to lift its core equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, above its target of 5.25 percent, the bank said.

Barclays has written down 1.7 billion pounds on credit assets so far this year. That is less than Royal Bank of Scotland, the U.K.'s second-biggest bank, which wrote down 5.9 billion pounds this year, and less than HBOS, the U.K.'s biggest mortgage lender, which marked down 2.8 billion pounds.

Sovereign wealth funds have made investments in Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley and UBS AG, which this month raised 16 billion Swiss francs ($15.4 billion) in a rights offer after getting 13 billion francs earlier this year from investors in Singapore and the Middle East.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Livesey in London [email protected]

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[blid2def]

Was doing my stock scans, and saw that Temasek Holdings had increased its stake in Pepsico [symbol]PEP[/symbol] (which, incidentally, has flashed a three white soldiers candlestick pattern).

Then, it led me to this: http://www.mffais.com/institutions/211738/

Not sure how reliable the data is, and I think it mainly covers stocks listed or tradeable on the US markets.

You can click on the headers to sort. Have fun.

[blid2def]

Okay, folks an update here for those who missed the action this morning:

This morning, there was a post here regarding Temasek selling half of its Merrill Lynch (MER) stake at a substantial loss. I believe the poster got the contents from here:

http://www.littlespeck.com/content/econ ... 080724.htm

Having read the story, some of us obviously started to post snide remarks about Temasek's talents (see my avatar for an example).

Well, somehow this case prickled my interest enough to investigate further, and what I realized was that there was a contradiction in the MFFAIS blurb reported by the blogger. In addition, I could not find any SEC filings (for MFFAIS' quoted date - and a range of dates around there) pertaining to Temasek's actions on its ownership of MER stock.

As such, the story, to me, is unsubstantiated and misleading - until proven otherwise. It isn't the original poster's fault - if anything, I put the questions on MFFAIS, and on the blogger who shared the story without further validating it.

Hence, I've decided to yank the original post, and the follow-up remarks. Of course, in due course, maybe more information supporting the case will be made available to confirm if the report is fact or fallacy. Hopefully.

[la papillion]

GD, seems like you might be right.

Take a look: http://in.reuters.com/article/asiaCompa ... 4820080725

Looks like we all learnt a lesson today. Do not be too quick to kick a fallen dog. Always check to see if the dog had indeen fallen first

[iam802]

Today, I learn a valuable lesson.

"Don't jump to conclusions! Investigate before concluding"

[la papillion]

Today, I learn a valuable lesson.

"Don't jump to conclusions! Investigate before concluding"

Haha, i concur with you Lesson learnt, let's move on

ps. go read cna forum, all flaming temasek, haha, so funny