Arabs buy all British ports, Mex Hwy in USA

POSTED BY: piratenews
UPDATED: Thursday, June 15, 2006 18:31
VIEWED: 2939
PAGE 1 of 2

PIRATENEWS

Wednesday, June 14, 2006 9:38 AM

For all you Brits laughing at US losing its ports to Commie China and Dubai, you're gonna love this.

Quote:

---

Britain's ports poised to fall into foreign hands

US bank close to sealing agreed bid for AB Ports
Sale to consortium will cause political row

Terry Macalister
Monday June 12, 2006
The Guardian

The vast majority of British ports - including Southampton, Immingham and Port Talbot - are poised to fall into foreign hands with an agreed bid from a consortium led by Goldman Sachs, the American bankers, close to completion.
The £2.4bn deal could be announced as early as this week as Goldman Sachs has completed due diligence on the 21 docks owned and operated by Associated British Ports.

The move is bound to trigger further political soul-searching about the UK's vital infrastructure being controlled from abroad, particularly after last week's agreement to sell the airports group BAA to the Spanish and P&O's takeover by Dubai Ports World (DPW). Goldman had tried to acquire BAA but lost out to Spain's Ferrovial. Neither Goldman Sachs nor AB Ports was willing to comment last night on the state of the talks but industry sources confirmed that a deal was close to being signed.

Goldman Sachs, alongside Borealis Infrastructure Management of Canada and GIC Special Investments of Singapore, won permission from its board two weeks ago to go through the books of AB Ports. This followed discussions around a potential offer priced at £2.4bn - 810p a share - which was up from £2.2bn during an initial rejected approach for Britain's biggest docks company.
AB Ports handles a quarter of the UK's seaborne trade through its 21 facilities, which includes the country's largest docks at Immingham to one of its smallest, Silloth on the Solway Firth. The company employs 3,000 staff and is a descendant of the state-owned British Transport Docks Board, which was privatised by the government of Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.

The UK port sector has been through its biggest period of upheaval for 20 years in recent months with a series of smaller companies changing hands. The most significant was the surrender by P&O to the £3.9bn bid from DPW after a bidding war that included Singapore's PSA International. P&O's main value came from the container handling terminals in the US and China rather than its small holdings in Britain. The main one was a P&O-leased facility at Southampton, a dock owned and run by AB Ports.

Last year Mersey Docks and Harbour Board agreed a £771m takeover by Peel Ports while the Teesside operator PD Ports was bought by the Australian-listed infrastructure company Babcock & Brown. The ports - and airports - sector is seen as attractive by private equity investors because they offer a stable stream of income, possess large property assets and have a good growth outlook.

Soaring global trade volumes - partly resulting from the industrialisation of China - have brought increased volumes to ports everywhere, including British ones such as Immingham.

An independent study by the consultancy MDS Transmodal for the Department for Transport predicted a doubling of container import volumes by 2030 and the government is deciding on whether to give the go-ahead to a number of applications to build more terminals.

The London-based private equity team at Goldman Sachs has been working flat out on due diligence at AB Ports after losing out on BAA. But well-informed sources said there were a few minor issues to be ironed out. "The fact that you have heard nothing from Goldman over the two weeks of due diligence tells you something but I would not be too strict on any timing," another source said.

The London-based bankers would dearly love to land a sizable deal after being criticised by Hank Paulson, the outgoing chairman and chief executive of the Goldman group, for their aggressive takeover tactics. The private equity team has launched unsolicited bids for a series of companies including ITV, Mitchells & Butlers, and London & Continental Railways. Its patchy track record also incl

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME