Under fierce pressure from US President Donald Trump, Hong Kong firm Hutchison on Tuesday said it had agreed to sell its lucrative Panama Canal ports to a US-led consortium.
CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd (長江和記實業) said it would offload a 90 percent stake in the Panama Ports Co (PPC) and sell a slew of other non-Chinese ports to a group led by giant asset manager BlackRock Inc.
The sellers are to receive US$19 billion in cash, the company said in a statement.
Photo:: Reuters
Hutchison subsidiary PPC has for decades run ports at Balboa and Cristobal on the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the interoceanic waterway.
However, since taking office in January, Trump has complained that China controls the canal — a vital strategic asset that the US once ran.
“To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it,” he said in a speech to Congress on Tuesday. “We’re taking it back.”
Trump had refused to rule out a military invasion of Panama to regain control, sparking angry protests and a complaint to the UN by the Central American nation.
In a joint press release with the buyers, Hutchison said the deal was motivated by business, not politics.
“I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports,” CK Hutchison comanaging director Frank Sixt said.
“This transaction is the result of a rapid, discrete but competitive process in which numerous bids and expressions of interest were received,” said Sixt, who described the chosen agreement as “clearly in the best interests of shareholders.”
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the transaction demonstrated his consortium’s capacity to “deliver differentiated investments for clients.”
“These world-class ports facilitate global growth,” he added.
The Panamanian government, for its part, said the sale was “a global transaction, between private companies, driven by mutual interests.”
It added that an audit launched into the PPC by the Panamanian comptroller’s office that oversees public entities would continue in spite of the sale.
The deal entails 43 ports comprising 199 berths in 23 countries.
CK Hutchison is one of Hong Kong’s largest conglomerates, spanning finance, retail, infrastructure, telecoms and logistics. It is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠).
Shares in CK Hutchison yesterday soared 25 percent in Hong Kong after the sale was announced.
Since 1999, the canal has been run by the Panama Canal Authority — an autonomous entity whose board of directors is appointed by Panama’s president and National Assembly. The 80km-long canal handles 5 percent of global maritime trade, and 40 percent of US container traffic.
Beijing has consistently denied interfering in the canal.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing