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PR Newswire
22-05-2013, 09:56 AM
Goldman sells ICBC.. while Temasek buys.
Perhaps Temasek buying to boost its offshore Yuan exchange business?
Temasek Holdings Pte (TMSK), Singapore’s state-owned investment company, boosted its stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (601398) for the third time in a year as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) ended an investment in the lender.
Temasek bought 280 million shares in the world’s largest bank by market value at an average price of HK$5.50 a share, or a total of HK$1.54 billion ($198 million), according to a Hong Kong stock exchange statement yesterday.
Goldman Sachs sold 1.58 billion shares in ICBC at HK$5.50 each, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday. That was a 2.5 percent discount to ICBC’s closing price on May 20 in Hong Kong trading. The Beijing-based bank closed 2.1 percent lower at HK$5.52 yesterday, paring its 12-month gain to 19 percent.
Temasek bought 3.55 billion ICBC shares at HK$5.05 apiece from Goldman Sachs in April last year and then disclosed the purchase of a further 83.7 million shares in the Chinese lender the following month. Yesterday’s purchase boosted its ICBC stake to 7.04 percent from 6.71 percent, according to the filing.
Temasek spokesmen didn’t answer phone calls or immediately respond to e-mails after regular business hours in the city-state.
The company managed S$198 billion ($157 billion) of assets as of March 31 last year, according to its website.
Minority Stakes
New York-based Goldman Sachs joins Citigroup Inc. © and Bank of America Corp. in cutting holdings in China as new capital rules known as Basel III make it more expensive to hold minority stakes in banks. Goldman Sachs has reaped about $12 billion in sales proceeds and dividends from its $2.58 billion investment in ICBC, calculations by Macquarie Capital Securities Ltd. show.
Goldman Sachs (GS) and client funds offloaded ICBC shares at least five times before the latest transaction after first investing in ICBC in 2006.
The Chinese lender last month reported a 12 percent increase in first-quarter profit, defying a sluggish domestic economy to boost lending. The world’s most profitable lender extended 461 billion yuan ($75 billion) of new loans in the first quarter, 25 percent more than in the same period a year earlier.
The bank and its closest local rivals are trading near record-low valuations on concern that profit growth may slow as loans sour and the government deregulates interest rates. ICBC trades at about six times estimated 2013 earnings, down from a high of 21 times in early 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Global financial firms including Temasek invested $33 billion in Chinese lenders from 2001 to 2009, according to regulatory data. They still own at least $45 billion of stakes in local banks, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05...investment
Perhaps Temasek buying to boost its offshore Yuan exchange business?
Temasek Holdings Pte (TMSK), Singapore’s state-owned investment company, boosted its stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (601398) for the third time in a year as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) ended an investment in the lender.
Temasek bought 280 million shares in the world’s largest bank by market value at an average price of HK$5.50 a share, or a total of HK$1.54 billion ($198 million), according to a Hong Kong stock exchange statement yesterday.
Goldman Sachs sold 1.58 billion shares in ICBC at HK$5.50 each, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday. That was a 2.5 percent discount to ICBC’s closing price on May 20 in Hong Kong trading. The Beijing-based bank closed 2.1 percent lower at HK$5.52 yesterday, paring its 12-month gain to 19 percent.
Temasek bought 3.55 billion ICBC shares at HK$5.05 apiece from Goldman Sachs in April last year and then disclosed the purchase of a further 83.7 million shares in the Chinese lender the following month. Yesterday’s purchase boosted its ICBC stake to 7.04 percent from 6.71 percent, according to the filing.
Temasek spokesmen didn’t answer phone calls or immediately respond to e-mails after regular business hours in the city-state.
The company managed S$198 billion ($157 billion) of assets as of March 31 last year, according to its website.
Minority Stakes
New York-based Goldman Sachs joins Citigroup Inc. © and Bank of America Corp. in cutting holdings in China as new capital rules known as Basel III make it more expensive to hold minority stakes in banks. Goldman Sachs has reaped about $12 billion in sales proceeds and dividends from its $2.58 billion investment in ICBC, calculations by Macquarie Capital Securities Ltd. show.
Goldman Sachs (GS) and client funds offloaded ICBC shares at least five times before the latest transaction after first investing in ICBC in 2006.
The Chinese lender last month reported a 12 percent increase in first-quarter profit, defying a sluggish domestic economy to boost lending. The world’s most profitable lender extended 461 billion yuan ($75 billion) of new loans in the first quarter, 25 percent more than in the same period a year earlier.
The bank and its closest local rivals are trading near record-low valuations on concern that profit growth may slow as loans sour and the government deregulates interest rates. ICBC trades at about six times estimated 2013 earnings, down from a high of 21 times in early 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Global financial firms including Temasek invested $33 billion in Chinese lenders from 2001 to 2009, according to regulatory data. They still own at least $45 billion of stakes in local banks, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05...investment
