(July 8): Temasek Holdings Pte. Chief Executive Officer Ho Ching suggested Singapore’s state-owned investor could still have a portfolio value of more than $300 billion, or not very far from that, despite the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy.
Temasek had a portfolio value of $313 billion as of March 31, 2019, and one of its top executives told Bloomberg in January that the portfolio was up by about 3%. But as the pandemic spread around the world, economies began to slow and financial markets crashed - bringing valuations down with them.
Ho said in a Facebook post that the portfolio includes listed firms and private companies that are bond issuers or still report to their shareholders. Temasek lists the major investments in its portfolio every year, and last year those investments made up about 60% of the total portfolio, she said. Tracking their performance would provide a “pretty accurate sense of what’s happening,” she added.
Some people used “that data to work out that Temasek’s portfolio value would be north of $300 billion as at 31 March 2020,” Ho said in her Facebook post. “The audited portfolio performance should be finalized over the next couple of weeks, and is unlikely to be very far from the above.”
A decline to $300 billion would be Temasek’s first annual drop in portfolio value since 2016. But it would also represent a 4.2% decrease - a far better result than the 9% fall it reported in 2016 and the 30% drop posted in 2009 after the global financial crisis.
Ho, who is also the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, announced last week that the firm would delay the release of its annual report from July to September. She said the coronavirus hampered the global flow of financial information.
See: Temasek Holdings to delay annual reporting to September, says CEO Ho
Lee is seeking a new term for his ruling party in national elections set for July 10.
