Taken From This Forum: "The Otak Stall"
26 Aug 2008
After a huge article about how well Temasek has done in the article below,
Temasek doubles profits despite volatile markets
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_272353.html
It appears that article was placed to make the subsequent news more palatable. At least the reporter acknowledged that knows that much of the profit is due to the sale of national assets.
A smaller embedded article on page A4, mentions that MOF just injected another 10 billion into Temasek.
The article is entitled "$10b cash boost from Finance Ministry".
Quote #1:
As chairman S. Dhanabalan said in a speech.... the MOF has "from time-to-time, made additional injections into Temasek. Since inception, we have received a total injection of a little less than $30 billion in assets and cash."
This number includes the net $10 billion inflow last year. Previous capital injections are believed to have been mostly in the form of assets like SingTel, PSA and SingPower rather than cash."
Question 1: If Temasek has been so profitable this year, why is there a need to inject $20b over the last 2 years when historically, Temasek has only had less than $10 billion injections in assets and cash since 1974?"
Question 2 : If the balance of the $10 billion, from pre 2007, are assets and cash from SingTel, PSA and SingPower, then it is very likely that those assets were transferred to Temasek at very low prices and not at market rates.
Just Huaneng's purchase of Tuas Power already pockets them S$4.2 billion. That excludes the billions due from pending privatisation of Power Seraya and Senoko Power, not to mention SingTel and PSA. Does such transfer pricing distort the true performance of Temasek Holdings?
Quote #2:
The capital injections as part of his overall allocation of reserves does not entail any Government influence over individual deals.
Message Link
