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100亿美金纸面损失一半,平均每人约分摊亏1000美金。
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GIC suffers $5bn paper loss on $10bn UBS investment
The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) said it converted its UBS notes into ordinary shares, suffering a paper loss of about $5 billion (about S$7 billion), reports Reuters.
GIC had invested 11 billion Swiss francs ($10.22 billion) in mandatory convertible notes in UBS to support the Swiss bank during the financial crisis.
GIC did not provide more details, but a filing it made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission early last month showed the original conversion price would be 47.7 Swiss francs, two-thirds more than UBS' last share price of 15.86 francs.
GIC had earned about 2 billion francs from a 9 per cent coupon over the last two years, which partially compensated for the sharp erosion in UBS' share price. The coupon expired yesterday.
"GIC confirms the conversion," a spokeswoman for the Singapore wealth fund said in response to Reuters' queries.
The filing had said GIC would exchange the mandatory convertible notes for 230.7 million ordinary UBS shares on March 5. GIC would have a stake of 6.6 per cent in UBS after conversion, making it the Swiss bank's biggest shareholder.
GIC, led by Deputy Chairman Tony Tan, is becoming active again in global markets after its portfolio shrank by more than a fifth in its last financial year as it was hit by the financial crisis that drove down the value of its financial holdings.
A market recovery helped it recoup half its portfolio losses in March-September last year.
GIC said in September that it had made a $1.6 billion profit after selling half of its 9 per cent stake in Citigroup.
The sale followed the conversion of its $6.8 billion of convertible preferred stock for common stock.
GIC's recent investments have been diverse, ranging from the hotel industry and China property developer Longfor to a videogaming firm, but are in line with a recent statement that it is not pursuing geographical targets.
GIC manages assets of more than $300 billion, says the Financial Times.
GIC rarely comments on its investment activities, but Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who chairs the fund, has said that it plans to hold the UBS stock for “two or three decades”.
Ng Kok Song, the fund’s chief investment officer, also said last September in the annual report that it might take longer than initially expected to recoup the investment, but he expressed “confidence” in the long-term prospects of the bank.
GIC did not participate, however, in a UBS rights issue in 2008 to raise just under 16 billion Swiss francs.
GIC invested a total of $18bn in Citigroup and UBS when the banks sought financing in the wake of writedowns on subprime mortgages.
Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s second sovereign wealth fund, is estimated by analysts to have incurred a loss of between $2.3 billion and $4.6 billion on the sale of a 3.8 per cent holding in Bank of America.
It is also thought to have incurred a loss on the sale of a stake of almost 2 per cent in the British bank Barclays.
Both GIC and Temasek have recently said that they plan to shift their investment focus more towards emerging economies, though neither fund has publicly ruled out taking further stakes in western financial institutions in the future.
Bankers blow billions faster than gamblers, says Bloomberg columnist William Pesek says in a column published in the Sydney Morning Herald. He begins the column by saying:
The big buzz in Singapore is about the casinos beginning to dot the city-state.
Singapore prefers to call them "integrated resorts." Gambling is what it is, though. Welcoming Las Vegas tycoons Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn is intended to woo tourists and diversify the economy.
It's not exactly a new idea. The truth is that Singapore has been gambling for some time now, and not very well.
The die was cast when the Government of Singapore Investment Corp, which manages more than $100 billion of state currency reserves, bet big on Zurich-based UBS. It took three days to agree to prop up debt-laden UBS in 2007. It may take 10 years to recoup that $10 billion. |
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