FT.com
29 Jul 2008
Announcing Temasek’s landmark $4.4bn capital injection in Merrill Lynch last December, John Thain, the bank’s chief executive, hailed the Singapore state investment agency as a “savvy investor with a proven track record of achieving strong investment returns”. Seven months later and Mr Thain has been proved right – though at a heavy cost to the troubled US investment bank.
Temasek invested at $48 a share, and pumped in another $600m in March, but watched forlornly as Merrill’s stock price sunk by about half this year. The paper loss had led to criticism in Asia and beyond that the Singapore investor had got its timing horribly wrong by failing to judge the depth of the crisis afflicting western financial stocks.
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