Larry Fink is going full throttle to complete its mega deal to purchase 43 ports including two on the Panama Canal – but bringing it all home will require some delicate maneuvering, sources told On The Money.
The BlackRock boss needs to get 23 countries to sign off on a new partnership headed by his giant investment firm to take control of dozens of ports worldwide from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. The Panama government, however, is accusing Hutchison of breach of contract and wants hundreds of millions of dollars it claims it hasn’t been paid for leasing rights.
Fink also needs approval from China, which if you haven’t noticed, is immersed in a nasty little trade war with the US. That means no deal might get approved involving any US company, whether it’s TikTok being sold to a consortium of US investors or Blackrock’s deal with Hutchison.
So why is Fink forging ahead? First, Larry plays a long game and this isn’t his first big deal. There’s a 145-day grace period from the time the deal was announced back on March 4. That’s when Fink’s bankers plan on “papering” the transaction, meaning they get those two-dozen or so countries that need to approve the port deal to do so, and then he will turn his attention to China.
Fink is no stranger to doing deals on the Mainland; he knows his way around the Chinese Communist Party’s bureaucracy, which is a requisite for doing business there. Recall, BlackRock was the first money management firm to set up a Chinese asset management subsidiary a few years back in an attempt to sell its funds to the country’s emerging upper class and wealthy elite.
Still, this deal is different given the fraught nature of the US-China tariff war. President Trump paused tariffs on every country but China, then doubled down on the latter. Beijing responded by threatening US exports with the same. Despite some happy talk from the administration about early stage negotiations, the Chinese are now balking at finding a middle ground.
But Fink is betting the trade war might not matter all that much because Hutchison is a Hong Kong-based company, not one domiciled on the Mainland. Yes, the CCP has been exerting more influence on Hong Kong despite its status as a “special administrative region” with a degree of independence.
It has stopped short of a full takeover because the autonomy has allowed the city to flourish as a business center. The Hong Kong stock market, for instance, is one of the world’s largest.
By negating the Hutchison deal, China would be setting a precedent, alerting every company that does business in Hong Kong it would face similar CCP scrutiny.
“Does China really want to tell the world that Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong,”‘ said one person with direct knowledge of the deal. “I don’t think so.”
That’s why Fink is still betting that American flags (and the Blackrock logo) will ultimately find their way to the Panama Canal.
