Shipping giant disposes of North American container terminals to Brookfield Asset Management
Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, owned by the family of Tung Chee-hwa, yesterday cashed in on global demand for container port assets by selling four terminals in North America to Brookfield Asset Management of Toronto for more than HK$14 billion, according to banking and industry sources.
They said the Canadian private equity firm, one of the three firms in the final round of bidding, agreed to pay US$1.8 billion to US$1.9 billion for the terminals in New York, New Jersey and Vancouver, Canada.
Also short-listed were the Macquarie Infrastructure Group and RREEF, the real estate and infrastructure investment arm of Deutsche Bank.
It is understood that Brookfield is an agent for Teachers' Private Capital, the investment arm of the C$96 billion (HK$582.72 billion) Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
The winning bid represents a valuation of 16.8 to 17.7 times the projected US$107 million in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) for the four terminals, according to DBS Vickers.
OOIL's ports division, which includes operations in California's Long Beach, Ningbo and Tianjin in the mainland and Kaohsiung in Taiwan, posted ebitda of US$99.8 million in the year to June, chief financial officer Nicholas Sims said on August 4.
