Posted on 02/21/2006 9:35:07 AM PST by cgk
A tipster e-mailed me last night:
I work as a corporate lawyer at a large law firm that has a speciality in Islamic finance. The real reason Dubai Ports World is undergoing the transaction is because of an Islamic finance vehicle called the sukuk. The sukuk is essentially a commerical paper type of Islamic financle vehicle--it is essentially a "fake" bond to work around the Muslim prohibition on interest.
Now comes the interesting part.
As you might know, Dubai has recently christened (my word) its stock exchange. It hasn't been very successful thus far--so they've been looking to
acquire really high profile items to trade on it. (Note: they also tried to buy the Refco assets after Refco collapsed). If the Dubai Ports World sukuk goes through, it becomes the largest publicly traded sukuk in the world.
As a result, Dubai instantly becomes the place to go for Islamic finance in the world--and folks specializing in Islamic finance stand to make a great deal of money.
Here's some background on how the bidding war between Dubai Ports World and the other competitor to buy out British-based P& O's port operations, Singapore’s PSA (the more experienced and established of the two bidders), shook out via ITP News, Jan. 26, 2006:
The multi-billion dollar bidding war between Dubai and Singapore over the British ports and ferries operator P&O could be settled this week.
Dubai Ports World (DPW), owned by the emirate's government, fired the first shot when it made a bid of US$5.91 billion in November 2005. However, Singapore’s PSA has hit back, approaching P&O with a conditional counter offer of US$6.21 billion. A formal offer could be submitted within the next few days.
PSA’s conditions were that it be allowed to complete satisfactory due diligence, that its board give final approval, that P&O’s directors withdraw their recommendation of the DPW offer, and that P&O’s pension trustees approve the offer.
PSA has operations in 11 countries and is the world’s second-largest ports group. By contrast, DPW was formed as recently as September with the amalgamation of the Dubai Ports Authority and DPI Terminals.
The company’s container throughput is roughly a third of what PSA handles. However, if DPW were to acquire P&O — currently the world’s fourth-largest ports group — the industry landscape would shift dramatically. Not only would DPW immediately become the second-largest player in the marketplace, it would also have secured key ports in India and Australia — markets in which fast traffic growth is anticipated...
...In order to help fund the massive bid, Dubai Ports, Customs & Free Zone Corporation (PCFC) have launched the world’s largest sukuk, or Sharia-compliant bond. What was intended as a US $2.8 billion issue has instead rocketed to US $3.5 billion, after an overwhelming response from investors. Lead-managed by Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) and Barclays Capital, the distinctive sukuk is also the first convertible instrument in the Islamic finance market.
The issue is just one of a series of initiatives designed to boost the PCFC’s corporate activities, ongoing business development needs and expansion plans. Its unique convertible structure allows partial redemption of up to 30% in the form of equity shares of the PCFC entities as and when they go for a Public Equity Offering within the next three years. If no Public Equity Offering takes place prior to the final redemption date, investors will be compensated with a higher yield.
The Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX) listed the world's largest Sukuk, worth US $3.5 billion, from Dubai Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCFC) on Jan. 26th, 2006. PSA withdrew last week.
Alex Alexiev, of the Center for Security Policy, points out:
Washington claims that the United Arab Emirates is a reliable friend and ally of the United States in the war on terror. To the extent that Dubai Ports World is a UAE state-owned company, this may in fact be the key question to ask. The answer is not hard to find if you start looking at the role played by the UAE as an eager financier of the huge worldwide infrastructure of radical Islam built over the past three decades by Saudi Arabia. An infrastructure that’s the main breeding ground of extremism and terrorism.
From the very beginning in the 1970s, the UAE has been a key source of financial support for Saudi-controlled organizations like the Islamic Solidarity Fund, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), World Council of Mosques, and the Muslim World League (MWL) as documented in The Muslim World League Journal, an English-language monthly. The IDB alone, for instance, spent $10 billion between 1977 and 1990 for “Islamic activities” and at least $1 billion more recently to support terrorist activities by the Palestinian Al Aqsa and Intifada Funds.
One of the most successful Islamist operations in the U.S. early on involved the Wahhabi ideological takeover of the Nation of Islam after the death of its founder Elijah Muhammad. Of the $4.8 million “presented” to W. D. Muhammad, Elijah’s son and successor, in 1980 alone, one million came from UAE’s president Sheikh Zayad, according to the August 1980 issue of the MWL Journal. Zayad continued his “philanthropic” activities by donating $2.5 million for a Zayad Islamic Center at Harvard University’s divinity school of all places. The donation had to be returned after it became known that a similar Zayad Center in the UAE was closed because it had become a hotbed of Islamic extremism. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. A reliable friend and ally? Perhaps, but hardly one of ours.
Dubai media outlets are calling critics and skeptics of the port sellout "Islamophobes."
If demanding that our government put American security interests above foreign business interests makes me an "Islamophobe," and if wanting to know the full details of the who, what, when, where, and why of this UAE government deal, secretly approved by the Treasury Dept.-led Committee on Foreign Investments in the US, makes me an "Islamophobe," I plead guilty.
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Joe Gandelman has a big news round-up and analysis.
The spoofing is underway at Scrappleface and Six Meat Buffet.
***At the suggestion of readers, I am opening up the comments section...have at it!...11:12pmEST comments closed...***
Good: Two GOP governors join rising bipartisan opposition to the White House's secretive port sellout deal with the United Arab Emirates...
Two Republican governors on Monday questioned a Bush administration decision allowing an Arab-owned company to operate six major U. S. ports, saying they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states.
New York Gov. George Pataki and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich voiced doubts about the acquisition of a British company that has been running the U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.
The British company, Peninsular and Oriental, runs major commercial operations at ports in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.
"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said in a news release.
"I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them in regards to this transaction," said the New York governor, who is still in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy.
Ehrlich, concerned about security at the Port of Baltimore, said Monday he is "very troubled" that Maryland officials got no advance notice before the Bush administration approved an Arab company's takeover of the operations at the six ports. "We needed to know before this was a done deal, given the state of where we are concerning security," Ehrlich told reporters in the State House rotunda in Annapolis.
Ehrlich says Maryland has the discretion to voice the contract. Pataki is asking the federal government to "share all critical relevant information made available to the Council on Foreign Investment during the course of the review of the purchase." New York could cancel the lease for operation.
A company at the Port of Miami is suing to block the transaction.
Cal Thomas: "There have been some dumb decisions since the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, including the "welcoming" of radical Muslim groups, mosques and schools that seek by their preaching and teaching to influence U.S. foreign policy and undermine the nation. But the decision to sell port operations in New York, Newark-Port Elizabeth, Baltimore, Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans to a company owned by the UAE may be the dumbest of all."
Rep. Peter King: "By having a company right out of the heartland of al-Qaida managing those ports without being properly cleared or investigated, to me is madness." More:
King also responded to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's defense that the government typically builds in "certain conditions or requirements that the company has to agree to make sure we address the national security concerns." The House Homeland Security Committee chairman said that, despite Chertoff's explanation on ABC's "This Week," he still has strong concerns about the inquiry. "When I talk to the people actually involved in the process, it was very cursory, it was very superficial," King said.
He said he found out about the purchase, which transfers operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia to the Persian Gulf company, last Tuesday in meetings with senior Bush administration officials. "As I understand it, the whole process took only 20 to 25 days," he said of the transaction. "There's no way you can do a complete analysis in 20 to 25 days and that includes financial analysis."
The Port Security, Maritime Security, and Homeland Security Blog is a good resource for news developments.
***
Frank Gaffney, who has led the whistle-blowing on the UAE deals, calls attention to more worrisome details:
Since a column raising an alarm about CFIUS' decision appeared in this space last week, three new factors have come to light that compound the strategic folly of the UAE deal:
# First, in addition to the six affected ports mentioned above, two others would also have part of their operations managed by DP World -- on behalf of none other than the U.S. Army. Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments?
# Second, while advocates of the stealthy CFIUS decision-making process point to the involvement of the Defense Department in its DP World decision, it is unclear at what level this bizarre proposition was reviewed in the Pentagon. Many top jobs remain unfilled by presidential appointees. Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign "clients," like the UAE.
# Then, there is the matter of financing the DP World takeover of Peninsula and Oriental. The UAE evidently intends to raise nearly all of the $6.8 billion price for P and O on international capital markets. It must be asked: Who will the foreign investors be, and might they have malign intentions towards the U.S.? If American sources of capital are being sought, will the possible danger this transaction may create for this country be properly disclosed? For that matter, will the underwriters, Barclays and Deutchebank, reveal to prospective funders the real risk that the deal will ultimately fall through?
Frank concludes:
Call it a Harriet Meirs moment. Politics being the art of the possible, it is time to recognize that the Dubai Ports World deal is neither strategically sensible nor politically doable. It is time to pull the plug, and to reform the secretive interagency CFIUS process that allowed this fiasco in the first place.
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Previous:
Banned in the UAE
Our ports, our sovereignty
Stop the port sellout
The White House port sellout is making some very strange bedfellows. First, Hillary and me. And now, on FNC's Big Story with John Gibson, NY Sen. Chuck Schumer embraces Halliburton over the UAE:
Download and watch the video (.wmv file)
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FOX News: House GOP Leaders Line Up Against UAE Port Deal
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Previous:
Protect our ports: steam builds
Banned in the UAE
Our ports, our sovereignty
Stop the port sellout
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Michelle Malkin ping list...
A number of readers overseas have e-mailed that my blog is now inaccessible in the United Arab Emirates. B. writes:
All internet users in the UAE have to use the government owned ISP, Etisalat. All web traffic is routed throught their servers where it is filtered, and some pages banned. Most of the banned pages are either porn, gambling or Israeli sites, but you have made the cut. Congrats.
One of Tim Worstall's Dubai-based commenters sends a similar report.
***
Update: Debbie Schlussel forwards an e-mail from a UAE-based reader suggesting that the ban was over the Mohammed cartoons rather than my port blogging. Very telling, either way.
For more on the port deal, read Debbie's take here.
For useful background and debate over the port sellout, see also:
ThreatsWatch
The Mad Tea Party
Sea2Sea
AJ Strata
Fox News Channel's Brit Hume predicts the White House will reverse course.
Via the NYPost, GOP Rep. Peter King weighs in on the Port of Gall.
Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh do their best Michelle Malkin imitations and now support national security profiling.
That is just so bad it deserves a bump!
Interesting. Another case of follow the money and you get the answer.....
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that the deal could make Dubai itself an attractive target for ME terrorists for dealing with the infidel.
Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments?
Sabotage is a remote possibility. What would be almost as useful to our enemies would be to have precise, detailed real-time information about the flow of U.S. military materiel. If you want to know whether the U.S. is going to war, wouldn't such information be useful? I'd think so.
Follow the money.....
I am very pissed off at the administration for allowing this to happen.
I am very pissed off at the administration for allowing this to happen.
Is it possible that if the port deal goes through that Dubai can then sell off the ports to someone else? Someone less "preferable" in the islamic world?
Gee Michelle Malkin is against it, I am shocked!
What is the Quid Pro quo here? There has to be a return to the US Gov. for allowing this. What is it?
Thats what I want to know, what is it that was so cherry to the administration that it would ok this to get it??? There is a quid pro quo here. What is it?
Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments?
What is our government thinking?
Sounds like you have a good point. And alot of undesirables over there have allot of cash, and allot of cash has been pulled out of the US by Iran, if I recall correctly.......
Is it wishful thinking to hope that there is something we just don't know right now??
Please identify the flaw in your question.
That's my wishful thinking as well...
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