A staff member is reflected in a Temasek Holdings logo at the company’s headquarters in Singapore (file). Singapore’s state investor Temasek yesterday said it plans to step up investments in the US and Europe.

Reuters/Singapore


Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings said it plans to step up investments in the US and Europe and could take advantage of a restructuring in China by investing further in the world’s second-biggest economy.
The city-state’s second-biggest sovereign investor reported an 8.6% rise in its portfolio size to a record S$215bn ($168.8bn) in its last financial year that ended in March, helped by a rebound in Asian shares.
“We are, however, seeing increasing opportunities in the US and Europe that are beneficiaries of the growth in other geographies, and are likely to step up our pace of investments in these markets,” Temasek said in its annual review yesterday.
It also said structural changes in China’s economy will create investment opportunities in state-owned enterprises and the private sector.
Temasek said it does not expect last month’s liquidity crunch in Chinese banks to have an impact on its banking investments in the world’s second-largest economy.
“There is sufficient liquidity in the system, so we are not concerned abut a liquidity crunch over a prolonged period,” Chia Song Hwee, head of Temasek’s investment group and co-head of China, told a news conference yesterday.
“The banks that we have invested in, they are actually very well capitalised.”
Temasek counts China Construction Bank as its second-largest investment with an 8% stake in its portfolio. It has also invested about $2.4bn in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China since 2012 alone.
Chinese banks suffered an unprecedented cash crunch last month after the Chinese central bank allowed rates to shoot to record highs to punish banks for making risky loans and to force them to curtail dodgy lending.
Temasek — headed by Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong — is a major global investor, holding stakes in firms such as Singapore Airlines and Standard Chartered Bank. It has also poured billions of dollars into large Chinese banks, including about $2.4bn into the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China since 2012 alone.
Temasek, which invests mainly in Asia, said its net profit edged down to S$10.6bn from the previous year’s S$10.7bn.
Singapore’s AAA-rated wealth fund said 30% of its portfolio was in Singapore as of the end of March, 23% in China and 13% in Australia.
Focusing on European companies with global operations, Temasek paid $779mn for a 5% stake in German chemical maker Evonik Industries and $1.35bn for an additional 5% stake in Spanish oil group Repsol.