NEWS -
China Finance
Written by The New York Times
Thursday, 20 August 2009 16:41
The Macquarie Group, the Australian bank, and China Everbright, a financial services group, said Wednesday that they were forming two funds that would seek a total of $1.5 billion for infrastructure projects.
It is the fourth such pairing involving major new plans for mainland China this month.
Macquarie and Everbright said they would contribute $100 million of their own to the funds, but many of the other details remained to be ironed out.
One fund will be open to nonretail investors outside of China, and the other to investors in the country.
Both funds will work together to back projects in transportation and water utilities — industries that Beijing is trying to develop.
In a joint statement, Chen Shuang, Everbright’s chief executive, said that the private sector had a history of investing in infrastructure in the country. “The importance of private capital in Greater China is demonstrated in the nearly 60 listed infrastructure operators with a combined market capitalization of over $150 billion,” he said.
Paul Scanlon, a spokesman for Macquarie, said the structure of the funds would depend upon the parties that contribute to them, because the demands of sovereign wealth funds and private investors often differed.
Only after the money has been raised, Mr. Scanlon said, will the funds begin considering specific projects for investment. In their joint statement, the banks said that they expected to close the funds to new investment next year.
Kevin So, a spokesman for Everbright, which is well connected to Chinese companies and government authorities, said that Beijing was encouraging investments in infrastructure and that Macquarie brought infrastructure expertise to the table.
“Everybody knows they’re a leading investment manager in this area,” he said.
Several other banks are expanding their presence in China, where the government is pursuing an ambitious four trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus program that also focuses on infrastructure.
This week, the First Eastern Investment Group said it was planning to raise 6 billion yuan for a private equity fund in the mainland, and the French brokerage firm CLSA said that it planned a 10 billion yuan asset-management fund in China.
Last week, the Blackstone Group and the government of Shanghai announced the creation of a local-currency private equity fund that aims to raise about five billion yuan.
NEWS -
China Finance
Written by AP
Wednesday, 19 August 2009 16:50
BEIJING — Sinopec Group said Tuesday it has completed its $7.5 billion acquisition of Addax Petroleum, obtaining new reserves in Africa and the Middle East in China's biggest foreign corporate takeover to date.
State-owned Sinopec Group is the parent of Sinopec Corp., also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia's biggest refiner by volume. It wants to expand its production capacity to profit from rising crude prices that have cost it billions of dollars in recent years due to government caps on retail fuel prices.
Addax is China's biggest foreign corporate takeover but the deal is half the size of last year's $14.3 billion acquisition by Aluminum Corp. of China, with Alcoa Corp., of a 12 percent stake in global miner Rio Tinto PLC, according to financial information firm Dealogic.
Chinese oil, mining and other resource companies, flush with cash from their country's economic boom, are investing in foreign oilfields, mines and other assets to profit from rising commodities demand.
The previous record for a Chinese corporate takeover abroad also was in the petroleum industry — last year's $2.5 billion purchase by China Oilfield Services of Norway's Awilco Offshore.
Addax, based in Geneva, has oil and gas exploration and production operations mainly in West Africa and the Middle East. It jointly operates the Taq Taq field in Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region with Turkey's Genel Enerji.
In its announcement, Sinopec said it paid 52.80 Canadian dollars ($47.80) per share for 157.6 million Addax shares.
Addax, which is listed on exchanges in London and Toronto, says Sinopec promised to keep Addax's top management intact.