FIrst, I believe it's 50/50, with the other 50 owned by Eller and Florida Stevadoring. But that's not important.
Second, it's not quite like ownership, but it sure looks like ownership. I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogy, let me try one. You get divorced, you and your spouse each own half a house in partnership. You get re-married in a state where your new spouse is automatically a 50/50 partner in all your assets.
But your new spouse can't move into the house she supposedly owns half of, because her assumption of half your assets can't change the parameters of the partnership deal regarding the house.
I beleive law firm partnerships are like this as well. You can't simply sell your partnership to anybody, the other partners have to all agree. In this case DP World can't sell the POTCMO company because they don't own it, they have a partnership interest in it. And they can't even just sell their partnership, unless allowed under terms of the partnership agreement (which I presume from the article don't allow that), and probably only to someone who was acceptable to the other partners.
And since one of the other partners is Eller, who started this whole thing, I would guess they would veto ANY other partners, thus forcing DP World to sell to them, and Eller could offer whatever pittance they cared to offer.
This is why it would be difficult for the congress to interfere in this partnership deal.
Maybe Eller will offer a fair price, and DP World will sell. It doesn't sound like that's happening now.
To me the percentage would be important. I was not happy with foreign companies in our ports--not just DPW. Personally, I would feel better to know that the American's had at least 51 percent interest. Then, the Dubai company would not have controlling interest.
I did hear on FOX this morning that Eller would try to buyout DPW very cheaply, which isn't right. Just because of political backlash, they shouldn't be able to steal their interest from them. I understand what you are saying though. Hopefully, Eller will take into consideration where our bases are located and take our country's interest into consideration. Thanks for the explanation.