4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Over the past three years, Gianluigi Aponte’s shipping company has spent more than $40 billion investing in everything from ships and ports to hospitals and high-speed rail—and that was before teaming up with BlackRock to buy 43 ports from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing’s conglomerate.
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0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, March 25th. |
0:05.5 | Today on Forbes, as Trump makes Panama Canal demands, meet the Swiss billionaire who bought two key ports with BlackRock. |
0:14.5 | During his speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4th, President Donald Trump touted a deal that had closed that day for two ports |
0:22.5 | on the Panama Canal. He said, quote, just today, a large American company announced they are |
0:28.4 | buying both ports around the Panama Canal. Politicians in the audience gathered at the Capitol, |
0:34.3 | applauded. The deal to which Trump was referring was the sale of 43 ports owned by billionaire Lee |
0:41.0 | K. K. Hachings' Hong Kong-based conglomerate, C.K. Hutchison, to a group led by asset |
0:46.2 | manager BlackRock for $23 billion, and the two Panama ports were just a small part of it. |
0:53.3 | What Trump didn't say was that one of the two partners |
0:56.0 | in the deal, Terminal Investment Limited, is an arm of Swiss shipping giant Mediterranean |
1:01.6 | shipping company, commonly known as MSC, co-founded by Swiss Italian billionaires, Jean-Louigi |
1:08.0 | and Rafael Apante, in 1970. |
1:14.6 | While the ownership structure of the sale hasn't been made public, the deal will turn MSC into the largest port operator in the world, |
1:18.6 | with stakes in more than 100 terminals in 54 countries, |
1:22.6 | including eight in the U.S. and three in Panama. |
1:25.6 | MSC owns 70% of terminal investment, |
1:30.5 | while investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners, or GIP, |
1:34.5 | led by U.S. billionaire Adebayo Bayo Ogunlezi, |
1:38.0 | and now owned by BlackRock, which bought it for $12.5 billion in October, |
1:42.9 | holds 20%, |
1:44.0 | and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, |
1:46.3 | GIC, owns the remaining 10%. |
... |
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