Hmmm.... Auntie Olivia has no money to manage Tuaspring, but somehow coughs out enough money to build a desalination plant in China.
Hyflux unit restructures $121.3m loan for desalination plant in China
https://www.straitstimes.com/busine...17m-yuan-loan-for-desalination-plant-in-china
Good morning, the chinese desalination plant was built earlier and had been put on sale for a few years. Hyflux had been trying to fetch a higher price because this was one of the gems in Hyflux.
The loan restructuring is is good for the Chinese bank (Bank of China). Hyflux restructured the loan by making the chinese bank a secured lender. If we assume Hyflux liquidates a few months later, the Chinese bank can take over the facility cheaply (at a fraction of the valuation and do like what PUB and Maybank did to Tuaspring). Therefore this is a bad piece of news for the unsecured bankers, MTN bondholders and PnPs because Hyflux will be more empty.
This announcement will also piss-off the three prospects that want to swallow Hyflux whole, namely Oyster Fund, Utico and the China State-owned Enterprise. This will force them to re-examine their proposal. Judging from this situation, the best outcomes for PnPs will be either:
- For a local GLC to absorb Hyflux into the holding company (because Hyflux wrote off more than 1.5billion in last FY) so that the NEA, PUB and Temasek's LNG business have less explanations to do for their cover-ups.
OR
- For the the China State-owned Enterprise (SOE) to take over Hyflux because it is about planting china's footprints in their Belt Road Initiative and they are backed by the Chinese banks. The China desalination plant will less likely be snatched by Bank of China with a Change-of-Control to Chinese SOE.
PnPs are likely to recover the bulk of their investments in these two situations but Olivia and the auditors' wrongdoings will be exposed. So to Olivia, it is better to let the retail investors die and start fresh.