Any assignment of those contracts from P&O to another entity is apparently subject to approval by the US Government or we would not be having this discussion.
I don't know how much regulatory scrutiny you are talking about but apparently as recently as January 26, P&O was willing to reverse course on this deal and sell to Singapore's PSA.
P&O agrees to $6.4 bln bid by Singapore's PSA
I just can believe that any irrevocable regulatory scrutiny by the British government got done in the last three weeks. Stuff like that does not move that fast for a massive company.
But the law wasn't followed; the Secretary of the Treasury is supposed to chair the panel, various other cabinet officers are on the panel, and none of them apparently participated in the meeting. A bunch of underlings decided there were no security issues, and didn't inform their bosses until the deal was approved in their bosses' names. Anybody in that group that honestly considered that there was no concern about security worthy of informing their superiors should be fired.
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060223:MTFH34018_2006-02-23_19-10-57_N23265870:1
http://www.treas.gov/offices/international-affairs/exon-florio/