P & Q?? You mean P & O?? My point is POMTCO isn't P&O...P&O stands for "Peninsular and Oriental" or somesuch nonesene...POMTCO is "Port of Miami Trading Company..." something that, at least as I READ the article, is a wholly seperate organization.
No, PORT OF MIAMI TERMINAL OPERATING COMPANY leases a terminal to P&Q and thats the terminal they are talking about. About a 100 companies lease terminals from PORT OF MIAMI TERMINAL OPERATING COMPANY. DP does not lease POMTCO. P&Q leases a terminal from POMTCO
This is the bigger post.
POMTCO is a U.S. company. It is "owned" by three companies as a joint venture: P&O (now purchased by DP World) Eller, and Florida Stevadoring.
The position of DP World is that they did not purchase POMTCO, and therefore POMTCO is not in a position to be sold because of the deal.
The letter was meant to reassure the people of POMTCO that U.S. law would not even ALLOW DP World to break the contract and sell the company (which as I said is owned by THREE companies).
In many cases, the terminal contracts were owned by P&O, which is not DP World. Those U.S. subsidiaries are what DP World has said it would sell.
But POMTCO was a different entity, NOT part of the P&O family of companies, so doesn't fall into the same category.
His comment was that a stock transfer of a company does not allow the new stockholders to restructure previous agreements, such as the partnership agreement with Eller and FS regarding the POMTCO company.
If congress wants, I guess they could pass a law requiring DP World to sell out it's stake in this partnership. How congress would make such a law work would be problematic.
You can't just have them sell their interest, because whoever buys would have to be acceptable to the other two partners. And you can't pass a law that seizes the ownership, or forces it to be sold at a loss, without compensation (as it would be a seizure).
And if you do decide to use congress to do this, it would technically be an emminent domain case -- with the congress seizing the assets of one private owner to transfer the property to another private owner because the government finds the new private owner BETTER for the government than the old one.
In other contexts most freepers are vehemently against the government seizing private property, even with just compensation, simply to transfer that ownership to another private entity.
But in this case, since the private owners are people we don't like, many freepers are happy to allow the government to do so, even though the constitution seems to put restrictions on such action.
The opponents have been cheated a bit. They thought congress was stopping the deal, but congress hasn't done anything, except cancel several good concessions that had been offered. They pretended to do something, but the sale went through. P&O is no more, it is all DP World. There is no law, agreement, or contract requiring DP World to sell anything, or do anything, beyond that which they signed to get the original approval.
I believe that, so long as congress doesn't keep meddling, DP World will honor its promise and sell off the U.S. subsidiaries that it directly owns that now hold terminal leases.
This announcement simply points out that when a port is operated by a U.S. company that is operated in a partnership deal rather than as a wholly-owned subsidiary, DP World cannot simply break those partnerships, nor are they trying to at this time.
I'm sure they are happy that this also sticks a finger in Eller's eye, seeing as Eller was the one that was so upset about this specific terminal, and for all their work they haven't changed anything at that terminal yet. Eller wanted to force the sale of DP World's partnership to them, probably at a reduced price. But they can't do so legally, so they are trying to get the law changed.