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BlackRock has agreed to buy two major ports on the Panama Canal from their Hong Kong-based owner as part of a $22.8bn deal, following pressure from Donald Trump over alleged Chinese influence at the waterway.
In apparent reference to the ports, the US president has frequently alleged that “China is running the Panama Canal”, adding last month that “we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen”.
Under the agreement, the ports’ Hong Kong-based owner CK Hutchison would sell the business to a consortium including BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners and Terminal Investment Limited, according to a company statement on Tuesday.
In a large-scale investment in the sector, the consortium would acquire a 90 per cent stake in the company that owns and operates the two ports in Panama.
The deal includes an 80 per cent stake of CK Hutchison’s ports subsidiaries, which run 43 ports in 23 countries, including in the UK and Germany. It also runs ports in south-east Asia, the Middle East, Mexico and Australia.
The remaining 20 per cent stake is held by port operator PSA, which is owned by Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund.
CK Hutchison said it expected to receive cash in excess of $19bn from the deal, a figure that includes repayment of some shareholder loans. CK Hutchison’s market capitalisation is HK$148bn ($19bn).
The transaction is “purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports”, said CK Hutchison co-managing director Frank Sixt.
Controlled by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing and his family, CK Hutchison has a portfolio of ports, retail, telecoms and other infrastructure. Ports operations made up around 9 per cent of CK Hutchison’s total revenue of HK$461.6bn in 2023.
The canal has become a flashpoint in Trump’s first 100 days in office, as the US president looks to expand the country’s borders and take control of infrastructure assets — roiling US allies and countries that had profited from decades of growing free trade.
The deal with BlackRock comes after the asset manager’s acquisition of GIP, which helped make the firm a force in infrastructure investing.
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