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Temasek's Net Income Falls 29% as Stake Sales Dwindle (Update1) By Jean Chua Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Temasek Holdings Pte, Singapore's state-owned investment company, said full-year profit fell 29 percent after it sold fewer assets and wrote down the value of its stake in Thai telecommunications operator Shin Corp. Net income was S$9.1 billion ($6 billion) in the year ended March 31, from S$12.8 billion a year earlier, Temasek said in its annual report released today. Total assets under management rose 27 percent to S$164 billion after Temasek bought shares in companies including Standard Chartered Plc. Temasek's acquisition of stakes in India's ICICI Bank Ltd. and Bank of China Ltd. helped increase overseas assets to 62 percent of its portfolio, and the company last week said it will invest about $2.3 billion in Barclays Plc. ``They are pretty good banks with decent returns, so if you're a big fund, it makes sense to buy them now,'' said Jorry Noeddekaer, who helps manage about $1.5 billion of Asian stocks at New Star Asset Management Ltd. ``You're able to ride through the ups and downs, and maybe in five, 10, 15 years, these may become really big banks.'' Temasek's expansion has been less successful in Thailand, where the value of its shares in Shin Corp. slumped 34 percent in the year ended March. Temasek, owned by Singapore's finance ministry, has given a return on investment of more than 18 percent by market value since its inception in 1974, the company said today. Maintaining that growth rate will be ``challenging,'' Yap Chwee Mein, the company's managing director for investment, told reporters. Shin Corp. Stake The company sold S$5 billion of assets in the past year. The year before, the company sold S$13 billion of assets, including stakes in Singapore companies SMRT Corp., CapitaCommercial Trust, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and developer CapitaLand Ltd. Temasek said profit also fell because of a decline in the value of its stake in Shin Corp., the Bangkok-based company founded by former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The company last year bought control of Thaksin's mobile- phone and satellite group. The deal exacerbated protests and a political stalemate in Thailand that led to Thaksin's ouster in the Sept. 19 coup. Losses from associated companies totaled S$830 million in the year ended March, compared with profit of S$1.16 billion a year earlier, according to the report. The company didn't say how much of the loss was caused by its investment in Shin Corp. ``In spite of the impairment, the portfolio as a whole hasn't been affected,'' said Ng Yat Chung, managing director of portfolio management. Shin Corp. ``is an investment we're still holding. The underlying business is a sound one.'' Rising Returns Temasek's annual total shareholder returns, measuring dividends received from investments and changes in the market value of its portfolio, was 27 percent. That compares with a 24 percent gain in the MSCI AC Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index and the 28 percent rise in Singapore's Straits Times Index. Shares in Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., which is invested in ports, phone companies, real estate developments and energy, rose 5.6 percent over that period. U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett's investment firm Berkshire Hathaway Inc. gained 21 percent in the same period. The highest returns came from Temasek's largest investments. Bank of China Ltd. shares rose 14 percent between the time it went public last year till March 31, and China Construction Bank stock gained 66 percent. Shares of India's ICICI Bank Ltd. rose 45 percent in the year ended March 31. Shares of Standard Chartered gained 2.2 percent in the year ended March. Temasek owns 14 percent of the U.K. lender, which gets most of its money from Asia. Singapore Assets Temasek has paid an annual dividend of at least 7 percent of its capital since its inception, Ng said, without giving details on the size of Temasek's capital. The company spent S$16 billion on acquisitions, compared with S$21 billion in the year ended March 2006. Temasek controls seven of Singapore's 10 biggest publicly traded companies, including Singapore Airlines Ltd., Singapore Telecommunications and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. ``The institutions that Temasek has minority equity stakes in are doing well, but in the medium to long term, it's more important to look at how they grow the institutions in which they have majority control, as it's a more stable form of asset appreciation,'' said Emmanuel Daniel, president of The Asian Banker, which provides research to financial services companies. Bank Acquisitions The company, run by 54-year-old Chief Executive Officer Ho Ching, said financial services swelled to 38 percent of total assets from 35 percent a year earlier. The company owns shares in ICICI Bank, India's second-biggest lender, and banks in Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea and Pakistan. Telecommunications accounts for 23 percent of Temasek's total assets, from 26 percent a year earlier. Temasek also owns stakes in Bank of China, the nation's second-biggest bank, and China Construction Bank, the third biggest. Investments in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries other than South Korea remained unchanged at 20 percent of its portfolio. Investments in Asia, excluding Japan and Singapore, rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. To contact the reporter on this story: Jean Chua in Singapore at [email protected] . Last Updated: August 2, 2007 07:51 EDT http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...kmp4&refer=asia He said: "The cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government... your asset values will disappear, your apartments will be worth a fraction of what it is, your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other persons' countries - foreign workers." so is this the famous dose of incompetent gahmen? http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/sin.../268475/1/.html