Singapore Corporate News - 1 Jan 2008

SembCorp Marine acquires Sabine Industries

SEMBCORP Marine (SembMarine) has wholly acquired Sabine Industries, which includes Sabine Shipyard and Sabine Offshore Services, from PPL Shipyard for a total US$4 million.

Located in Texas, Sabine Industries, renamed SembCorp-Sabine Industries, and Sabine Shipyard, renamed SembCorp-Sabine Shipyard, have direct access to the Texas and Louisiana offshore drilling activities and own 223 acres of land, SembMarine said.

The acquisition will be funded from SembMarine's internal resources.

'Sabine Industries, acquired by PPL Shipyard in September 2005, will be planned and outfitted as part of SembCorp Marine's overall strategy to facilitate and serve its US customers in offshore rig repairs, refurbishment and rig building in the Gulf of Mexico region,' SembMarine said.

Separately, wholly-owned SembMarine subsidiary Dolphin Shipping Company has entered into a joint venture with Entraco Venture Corporation to own and operate support vessels.

The JV company, to be named Dolphin Workboats, will own and manage vessels including tugs and barges to support the group's South-east Asian operations.

The issued share capital of Dolphin Workboats is S$1 million, comprising one million ordinary shares of $1 each, to be funded internally by Dolphin Shipping Company and Entraco Venture Corporation under a 50:50 JV structure.

UOB seeks to double stake in Vietnam bank

Singapore's United Overseas Bank (UOB) has sought permission to double its holding in Vietnam's Southern Commercial Bank to 20 per cent, the Vietnamese bank said in a statement seen yesterday.

Singapore's second-largest lender last week finalised a deal to buy 10 per cent of the unlisted Ho Chi Minh City-based bank. It had said in January the stake was worth S$44 million.

'The two banks also signed an application to the State Bank of Vietnam asking for permission to raise UOB's investment in Southern Bank to 20 per cent,' the statement said.

Southern Bank, one of Vietnam's 10 largest partly private banks, said in April it wanted to list in Singapore.

The bank has yet to list at home, but its shares have more than halved on the unregulated markets to 36,000-37,000 dong (S$3.23-S$3.32) from 82,000 dong in April, indicating its value at around US$290 million.

Vietnam limits total foreign ownership in domestic banks to 30 per cent, with a 10 per cent cap for any individual investor.

But the government has said that in exceptional cases it would allow a foreign strategic investor to own 20 per cent.

Eight foreign banks, including Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd and Standard Chartered plc, have bought stakes in Vietnamese banks as they look to benefit from the communist-ruled country's fast-growing economy.

HSBC Holdings plc has sought permission to raise its 15 per cent stake in Vietnam's Techcombank to 20 per cent.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, Singapore's third-largest lender, owns 15 per cent of Hanoi- based VP Bank.

Deposits at Vietnamese banks grew more than 36 per cent this year. Only 8.2 million of Vietnam's 85 million population have bank accounts, up from five million in 2006, industry reports show.

SingTel to post exceptional gains for Q3

SINGAPORE Telecommunications is set to report net exceptional gains for its third quarter ended Dec 31 as currency translation gains in its Australian unit offset divestment losses in a Taiwanese fixed-line phone company New Century InfoComm Tech Co (NCIC).

The local telco said yesterday that it will register an exceptional realised currency translation gain, net of hedging, of about $118 million for the October-December quarter.

This translation gain arose from SingTel's wholly owned SingTel Australia Investment Ltd (SAI) paring its Australian dollar denominated share capital by A$323 million after receiving interest paid by Singapore Telecom Australia Investments Pty Ltd.

SAI owns 100 per cent of Singapore Telecom Australia Investments, which in turn owns 100 per cent of SingTel Optus.

The translation gain represents the difference between the amount of share capital returned by SAI and the historical cost of investment in Singapore dollar terms to its shareholders.

Including the $84 million translation gain recorded in the first quarter ended June 30, 2007, SingTel's total exceptional translation gain for the nine months to Dec 31 will add up to some $202 million.

But its third quarter ended Dec 31 will also face an exceptional loss of $96 million after it completed a share swap with Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (FET), in which SingTel agreed to exchange its entire shareholding in loss-making NICI for new FET shares.

SingTel announced yesterday that it has exchanged its 980.32 million shares in NCIC for 160.37 million new FET shares, which represent 3.98 per cent of the issued share capital of FET. The share swap agreement with FET was made on Aug 15.

On Dec 28, the market value of these new FET shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation was NT$6.6 billion (S$294 million), net of transaction costs, based on the closing market price of NT$41.30 per share.

This was lower than the unaudited consolidated carrying value of the NCIC shares at $390 million based on the historical exchange rate, hence resulting in a disposal loss of $96 million. This includes $94 million from the release of foreign currency translation losses previously taken to reserves.

For the first half of this year, SingTel's net profit rose 6.6 per cent year-on-year to $1.9 billion on the back of a 10.7 per cent gain in operating revenue to $7.3 billion.

The telco, which gets 74 per cent of its earnings from outside Singapore, benefited from the stronger Australian dollar and Indian rupee.

Its profit for the second quarter to Sept 30, which rose 3.3 per cent to $988 million, also received a lift from foreign currency gains.

Nera wins $1.2m order from Philippines telco

NERA Telecommunications says it has received orders from a telecom operator in the Philippines to supply and deliver microwave radio equipment. The orders have a combined value of about $1.2 million. The contract is not expected to have a significant impact on Nera's performance for the current financial year.

Parkway winds up privately held units

PARKWAY Holdings has announced the voluntary winding-up of three of its privately held units - Shenton Medical Centre, GMMC Maritime Medical Centre and EHS Health Screeners. All are wholly owned subsidiaries. Parkway said the companies have been dormant since 2003.

Yellow Pages to unveil restructuring plan

YELLOW Pages says it will announce a plan on restructuring of its core business of print publishing and fast-tracking the growth of its digital business by Jan 7. It had previously said it would unveil its plan by end-2007.