September 01, 2005
Bulls in the China Shop
Temasek spreads its chips all over the table, adding a 10% (pre-ipo) stake in Bank of China to its existing portfolio of shares in China Construction Bank (initially 5.1%), China Minsheng Bank (4.6%), and of course its de-facto controlling stake in DBS, which has major operations in Hong Kong and 7 offices in the Mainland.
With this spree totalling at least $4.8bn so far, Temasek's banking team seems far from tapped out, and is still rumored in other FIG cicles to be a serious rival for the Carlyle/Prudential consortium in bidding for a major stake in China Pacific Insurance Group.
The WSJ notes:
...Temasek's style historically has been to shy away from the sort of hands-on corporate restructuring that, say, private-equity funds engage in to try to boost the value of their investments. And Temasek, with a staff of about 200, will be hard-pressed to transfer the sort of modern management know-how that a larger institution like Bank of America or HSBC Holdings PLC boasts.
Posted by The Banker at September 1, 2005 05:35 PM
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