Of Money Matters
February 11, 2009
Temasek Holdings Loses 31 Percent of Portfolio
By BETTINA WASSENER
By BETTINA WASSENER
HONG KONG — Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government’s sovereign wealth fund, said Tuesday that the value of its investment portfolio fell by 31 percent of its total, or about $39 billion, from March to November last year, a reflection of the stock market rout set off by the turmoil surrounding American subprime mortgages.
Temasek’s portfolio was worth 127 billion Singapore dollars ($85 billion) at the end of November, down 31 percent from the end of March. Lim Hwee Hua, senior minister of state with the Finance Ministry, confirmed the figures to Parliament on Tuesday, news agencies reported.
The decline was broadly in line with the performance of the world’s stock markets last year — the MSCI World Index fell 38 percent over the same period in American dollar terms, Bloomberg News said.
Temasek, which has a wide-ranging portfolio spanning financial services, telecoms, media, infrastructure and other sectors, is nursing losses from prominent investments that it made in Merrill Lynch and Barclays as it aggressively expanded outside its core Asian market.
Its $5.9 billion investment in Merrill Lynch alone resulted in a loss of more than $2 billion; the shares plunged before the stock was delisted after Merrill’s purchase by Bank of America.
Temasek controls some of Singapore’s best-known companies, including Singapore Airlines and Singapore Telecommunications, and has stakes in global companies like Standard Chartered.
Last week, Temasek announced that its chief executive, Ho Ching, would step down and be replaced by Charles Goodyear, the former chief executive of BHP Billiton, on Oct. 1.
S. Dhanabalan, Temasek’s chairman, said that the decision by Ms. Ho to step down was not linked to performance and that it was too early to determine whether investments made in the last two years would lose out in the long term. Ms. Ho drove the state fund’s expansion outside Singapore with acquisitions in China, Europe and the United States. She is married to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
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Temasek’s portfolio was worth 127 billion Singapore dollars ($85 billion) at the end of November, down 31 percent from the end of March. Lim Hwee Hua, senior minister of state with the Finance Ministry, confirmed the figures to Parliament on Tuesday, news agencies reported.
The decline was broadly in line with the performance of the world’s stock markets last year — the MSCI World Index fell 38 percent over the same period in American dollar terms, Bloomberg News said.
Temasek, which has a wide-ranging portfolio spanning financial services, telecoms, media, infrastructure and other sectors, is nursing losses from prominent investments that it made in Merrill Lynch and Barclays as it aggressively expanded outside its core Asian market.
Its $5.9 billion investment in Merrill Lynch alone resulted in a loss of more than $2 billion; the shares plunged before the stock was delisted after Merrill’s purchase by Bank of America.
Temasek controls some of Singapore’s best-known companies, including Singapore Airlines and Singapore Telecommunications, and has stakes in global companies like Standard Chartered.
Last week, Temasek announced that its chief executive, Ho Ching, would step down and be replaced by Charles Goodyear, the former chief executive of BHP Billiton, on Oct. 1.
S. Dhanabalan, Temasek’s chairman, said that the decision by Ms. Ho to step down was not linked to performance and that it was too early to determine whether investments made in the last two years would lose out in the long term. Ms. Ho drove the state fund’s expansion outside Singapore with acquisitions in China, Europe and the United States. She is married to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
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Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said the government has sufficient savings built up during this term of government to fund the $20.5 billion Resilience Package he unveiled as well as the resulting record budget deficit of $8.7 billion.
-Channelnewasia, 22 Jan 2009 -Singapore taps into reserves for first time to handle crisis
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Temasek's loss estimated at $39billion according to NY Times.
Singapore's buget costing a total of $20.5billion + $8.7billion = $29.2billion
It takes more to recover what Temasek have lost to benefit the 4mil+ population of Singapore!
It takes more to recover what Temasek have lost to benefit the 4mil+ population of Singapore!
posted by klayhead at 11:51 am
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