QCOM QUALCOMM Inc

By Costas Paris and Joanne Chiu 

China's Cosco Shipping Holdings Co. is starting the process of selling its large container terminal in Long Beach, Calif., a major gateway for U.S. trade that is expected to bring bids of more than $1 billion from some of the world's biggest port operators, people involved in the matter said.

The sale is part of an agreement with U.S. regulators that gave Cosco the green light to buy Hong Kong-based container shipping line Orient Overseas International Ltd. for $6.3 billion in July.

Orient Overseas operates the Long Beach Container Terminal under a long-term concession. Cosco agreed earlier this year with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to place it into a U.S-run trust and sell it within a year to allay national security concerns over a Chinese state entity running a major U.S. gateway.

Cfius has scuttled several international transactions in the past couple of years including Broadcom Ltd.'s $117 billion takeover of chip rival Qualcomm Inc. and the sale of MoneyGram International Inc. to Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Financial Services Group.

"Sale advisers are being hired and the expectation is for bids of more than $1 billion from global port operators and maybe pension funds and private equity," a person directly involved in the matter said. "The sale is being run by OOIL and should be completed by June at the latest."

The Long Beach terminal is one of the few in the U.S. with extensive automation and can handle some of the world's largest container vessels. The terminal is expanding to handle ships carrying more than 20,000 boxes each.

The Port of Long Beach is one of the biggest in the U.S., with more than 7.5 million containers moving in and out of the site last year, or about one fifth of U.S. trade volumes. Apart from OOIL, a number of foreign shipping operators have stakes in the port's terminals including Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company and Japan's K Line.

People involved in the case said bids are likely from APM Terminals, the port operating arm of Danish logistics giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, Japan's Ocean Network Express, Taiwan's Evergreen Marine, Hong Kong's Hutchison Port Holdings and South Korea's Hyundai Merchant Marine.

Seattle-based port operator SSA Terminals may also be in the running. DP World, one of the world's biggest container terminal operators, could offer a bid, but the Dubai-based company hasn't sought to own any U.S. properties since an effort to buy several American terminals in 2006 collapsed under political pressure and security concerns.

Cosco has minor investments in other U.S. ports, including another pier at Long Beach as well as at the ports of Los Angeles and Seattle.

Imports to U.S. seaports in the West Coast have been surging in recent months in an apparent push by retailers and manufacturers to pull orders forward ahead of a new round of tariffs set to hit U.S.-China trade in January.

Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's top hub for container trade and the main destination for imports from China, handled a combined 849,908 containers in October, up 17.7% from the same month last year and 10.2% from September.

Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Joanne Chiu at joanne.chiu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 20, 2018 13:08 ET (18:08 GMT)

Grafico Azioni QUALCOMM (NASDAQ:QCOM)
Storico
Da Apr 2024 a Mag 2024

Grafico Azioni QUALCOMM (NASDAQ:QCOM)
Storico
Da Mag 2023 a Mag 2024