Oops! US$ 1.48 b loss!!

Temasek Selling Merrill Lynch

Half or total of 87m shares have been sold off at a loss, according to US recorded filings.

By Seah Chiang Nee
Jul 24, 2008

Temasek Holdings has sold off half its ill-timed investment in Merrill Lynch - or about 87m shares, according to a mutual funds report on institutional trades on US stocks.

The online report, MFFAIRS (Mutual Fund Facts About Individual Stocks), reported it sold off 86,949,594 shares (50%), leaving a current holdings of 86,949,594 shares (50%), according to the filings made public.

The report gave no exact date or price of the sale.

Neither has there been any confirmation from Temasek, which had paid US$48 a share last year. http://www.mffais.com/newsarticles/2...37-211738.html

Last week Merrill Lynch was traded at $31.

At that price Temasek would have suffered a loss of $17 a share - or a total loss of about US$1.48b for the 87mil shares.

Despite massive write-downs and capital injection, Merrill Lynch’s outlook remains uncertain, reports Bloomberg.

The company’s equity capital position is weak relative to competitors, said Brad Hintz, a New York-based analyst at Sanford C Bernstein, reports Ambereen Choudhury.

“With $19.9b in CDOs still frozen on the balance sheet and with counterparty risk rising on the hedges underlying these troubled positions, the potential for additional material write-downs remains a concern,” Hintz said.

The New York-based firm’s credit rating was cut last week by Moody’s Investors Service to A2 from A1.

The third-biggest US securities firm probably will report a loss of $6.57 a share this year, compared with an earlier forecast of $1.07, Hintz said.

The revised estimate assumes the company generates no earnings in the second half.

Merrill may have to take an additional $10 billion of pre-tax write-downs related to its holdings of mortgage securities, Moody’s estimates.

Huge paper losses

The disposal leaves Temasek Holdings and the Government Investment Corporation (GIC) still holding substantial parts of big troubled Western banks.

Its remaining investments in UBS (Switzerland), Citigroup, Barclays and Merrill Lynch - at an original cost of US$21.88b - have declined on by some 47 percent in value.

That is a paper loss of US$10.28b. However, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had said these investments were made as a long-term strategy of 30 years.

But as the Merrill Lynch sale shows, Temasek is not inflexible about cutting losses, if things threaten to get worse.

The political leadership has defended its investment of these sub-prime banks as “an opportunistic” foray that can happen once in a long while.

It believes these companies will survive the crisis and emerge stronger.

Some experts believe that Temasek has made an error of judgment.

Investment guru Jim Rogers said in July he believed that US bank stocks could fall further and predicted that Singapore’s state investors would lose money on Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.

“I’m shorting investment banks on Wall Street,” the successful investor said. “It grieves me to see what Singapore is doing. They are going to lose money.”

At the Nomura Dialogue recently, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew reported to investment mistakes, but that no one had benefited from it.

Singaporeans who want to see greater transparency in the government’s investments in troubled companies are unhappy with this vague answer to a serious problem.

One writer said, “Should we just move on? I do not think so. The patently huge mistake is not merely the result of recklessness but rather a systemic lack of accountability in making some of our largest investments.

“Let it be clear, the harm is terminally done. The entire reserves system must be re-examined and audited.”

Said slohand, “I saw the interview on TV last night and felt shortchanged.

“He brushed aside the issues with the logic that since the officers who made the decisions were not the beneficiaries in any sense of the word, such lapses are mistakes and are therefore acceptable...

“..The size indicates that it can only come from the very top.”

The skies are dark but the storm has not broke yet.