Results tagged “temasekholdings”

Looks like the much talked-about HK$7 billion bid by Singapore Airlines and its parent Temasek Holdings for a 24% stake in Shanghai's loss-making and debt-laden China Eastern Airlines may not happen just yet. Blocking the bid is its arch-rival and shareholder, Air China, as well as its parent China National Aviation Corp. (CNAC), which has now upped the ante by saying it would bid no less than HK$5 per share if shareholders vote against Singapore Airlines' HK$3.8 offer.

Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Singapore Airline’s joint bid for a 24 percent stake of China Eastern Airline finally received its blessing from Beijing last week. The deal valued CEA at HK$3.80 per share. China Eastern’s Hong Kong listing after a three month halt resumed trading earlier today and promptly doubled from HK$ 3.73 to HK$ 7.50 before paring back to settle around HK$ 6.90 in the afternoon. Today’s surge in gave the two new investors an instant HK$5.84 billion profit on paper, about USD $750 million. Not bad for a day’s work! Shares of all four major Chinese airlines (the other three are Air China, China Southern and Hainan Air) traded on the domestic exchange rallied 10 percent on the news, the maximum daily limit allowed under local rules. In related news, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at another a record high, up 102 points, or 2 percent, at 5321.

The People's Congress is expected to pass an Anti-Trust legislation today, the first of its kind in China, and one, 13 years in the making. For those that are law buffs, Fortune has a nice article here, with some in-depth analysis. We, not exactly students of jurisprudence, have only one question in mind. Will the powers that be stop China Mobile from charging us extortionist rates? Where are our free "night and weekend" minutes? Where are our free "in network calling"? Ok, that's more like three questions.

Not content with making cars and computers for the world, China is now on to its next big thing -- aircraft. The long-awaited ARJ-21 (pictured here) is China's very first homegrown commercial aircraft and has been launched amid much fanfare by the aircraft maker AVIC I. Now only a name is lacking, and if you can come up with a creative Chinese name of between two and four Chinese characters before September 28, RMB50,000 will be yours! (Sorry apparently English names are worth nothing).

Even while Shanghaiist is waiting with bated breath for direct flights to the east coast, China Eastern Airlines is set to sell a 25 percent stake to Singapore Airlines, the world's largest carrier by market capitalisation, for HK$7.9 billion (US$1 billion) worth of new shares. In the meanwhile, Temasek Holdings Pte, Singapore's state-owned investment arm with $85 billion of assets, may join Singapore Airlines in its bid for a stake. China Eastern suffered a net loss of 2.8 billion yuan in 2006, thereby gaining the dubious honour of becoming the only one of China's three state-owned airlines to report a loss last year. Whatever it is, one can only hope this means better inflight service, better food, fewer delays and fewer cancellations for passengers.

Last Sunday, Beijing took another step in diversifying its mammoth US$1.2 trillion (that's 1,200,000,000,000) foreign reserve by purchasing a US$3 billion stake in US private equity giant the Blackstone Group.