Thread: Punta Colonet the Mexican Long Beach

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http://www.elsemanario.com.mx/news/news ... ry_id=7409

MEXICO CITY, June 6, 2008 .- The greedy investors who relish the largest infrastructure project in Mexico may say "land in sight" for the federal government's announcement earlier this month to launch the tender to build the port of Punta Colonet, Baja California will need approximately U.S. $ 4 billion and trigger another 6 billion more.

With a delay of several years to begin construction of this major port for cargo from Asia to the final destination for U.S. Colonet has risked losing the appeal to progress in the expansion of the Panama Canal.

"By late June or early July Punta Colonet will be tendred," announced the Secretary of Communications and Transport (SCT), Luis Téllez, in a press release.

Located 240 kilometers south of Tijuana, Punta Colonet is the ideal starting point for development of a new port for the natural features of the maritime area.

For the dimensions of the work could be a real alternative and bring an end of more economic problems of congestion of vessels in the port complex on the west coast of the U.S.: Los Angeles-Long Beach, where ships wait as much as a week to load and unload which is why some refer to as Punta Colonet the Mexican Long Beach . "

Among the stakeholders, is the Forbes ranked billionaire Asia Li Ka Shing, the employer with the greatest personal fortunes in this region, who is the main shareholder in Hutchison Whampoa, a conglomerate that controls industry largest operator of ports in the world, Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH), among other telecommunications businesses, shopping centers, carbonated beverages, real estate, hotels, and energy and infrastructure projects, among others.

On the Mexican side,one could not miss the "King Midas", Carlos Slim Helú. The main shareholder of Telmex, America Movil and Inbursa has formed a consortium that includes Grupo Mexico, the industrialist Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco (Ferromex majority shareholder) also ranked as a billionaire by Forbes and the U.S. MTC, one of the biggest ports operator in the world. Larrea and Slim are partners in the company that controls at business rail.

Ferromex, on winning the international tender would be the investor and operator of a 280 km rail network that would be built to connect the port with the U.S. rail network.

Slim's partner, since 2007 MTC Holdings is owned by an investment fund of American International Group (AIG). This company has acquired in 2006 that P & O Ports North America to operate six ports on the east coast of America from the company Dubai Ports World (DPW) resulting the controversy that was generated in Congress by a business operator in the Arab port terminals.

In sum, the American partner of Slim operates 49 ports with 95 terminals in the United States, Mexico and Chile, with a turnover of about 1.6 million dollars annually.

It also involves the Danish Maersk, which controls the largest shipping vessels in the world and operates one of the largest networks of ports in the world: APM Terminals.

Other "heavyweights" are Dubai Ports World, PACER Stacktrain, China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco), the Taiwanese Evergreen Group China Shipping, Hyundai Merchant Marine, Kansas City Southern, SSA Marine, among others.

Besides the construction of the port from scratch, the project also envisages the construction of an electric generating plant, a natural gas unloading terminal, hotel complexes, industrial, and commercial airports, in addition to the residential areas.

Long Beach Mexican ¿?

The nickname of Mexican Long Beach forPunta Colonet project arises from the carrying capacity that can be received and dispatched after the sixth year of coming into operation, according to some experts.

The name comes from the U.S. port complex, Los Angeles-Long Beach, California, which in 2007 moved 11.5 million containers, or TEUs, a figure that ranks as the fifth largest port in the world.

The TEU is the reference technique used as standard in the world to appoint containers or tins of 6.1 meters or 20 feet, hence its English name: Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit

Through the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach transits over 40% of all commercial containers leaving from the United States, and 80% of the goods origin or destination of Asia.

In the case of Colonet, projections indicate that it could mobilize a million TEUs in the first year of operation, and 5.0 million after the sixth year. Predictions that contrast sharply with the 3.1 million TEUs moved in together that the 16 commercial ports in all of Mexico in 2007.

The largest port in Mexico, Manzanillo (Colima) moved 1.4 million containers in 2007. A figure contrasts with the 1.0 million that moved into the complex monthly Los Angeles-Long Beach. (Editorial El Semanario Unlimited)


Tomas de la Rosa Medina
06/06/08: 3:51 pm

© Copyright, 2009. Business Press ®, S de R.L. of C.V.

ALIPAC seems to get all kinds.

It contains people who range from those Anglos on the fringe who feel nostalgic about reports of Cesar Chavez brother's squads who beat any clandestine border crossing Mexicans with a stick on a dark night to those who are very proud of being Mexican Americans themselves.

We also seem to catch a lot of neo mercantilists who feel that the US should close all its borders to commerce or only have export international trade.

I think this Puerto Colonet is an interesting project that could employ a lot of Mexican illegal aliens who choose to leave or are deported reducing acceptance of arguments for amnesty.

This is going a long way to avoid the jobs for Americans..mainly the Longshoremen who load and unload cargo ships. Traitors..everyone of them.

Well like I said

Rockfish not everyone here is a longshoreman and not everyone appreciates the cost of paying for a week of demurrage on goods to inflate the income made in just one occupation longshoring due to a bottleneck. Status quo provides planty of overtime for a single occupation but it adds costs for every other American.

I want 4 borders around America!
The rest of what I want on the border I can't say. It's against the rules ....

Is this the same AIG that we just bailed out?

Slim's partner, since 2007 MTC Holdings is owned by an investment fund of American International Group (AIG). This company has acquired in 2006 that P & O Ports North America to operate six ports on the east coast of America from the company Dubai Ports World (DPW) resulting the controversy that was generated in Congress by a business operator in the Arab port terminals

Looks like it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008.U.S. to Take Over AIG in $85 Billion Bailout; Central Banks Inject Cash as Credit Dries Up
Emergency Loan Effectively Gives Government Control of Insurer; Historic Move Would Cap 10 Days That Reshaped U.S. :


By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG, DEBORAH SOLOMON, LIAM PLEVEN and JON E. HILSENRATH
The U.S. government seized control of American International Group Inc. -- one of the world's biggest insurers -- in an $85 billion deal that signaled the intensity of its concerns about the danger a collapse could pose to the financial system.

The step marks a dramatic turnabout for the federal government, which had been strongly resisting overtures from AIG for an emergency loan or some intervention that would prevent the insurer from falling into bankruptcy. Just last weekend, the government essentially pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., allowing the big investment bank to go under instead of giving it financial support. This time, the government decided AIG truly was too big to fail.


Associated Press
Businessmen leave an American International Group office building Tuesday in New York.
.The U.S. negotiators drove a hard bargain. Under terms hammered out Tuesday night, the Fed will lend up to $85 billion to AIG, and the U.S. government will effectively get a 79.9% equity stake in the insurer in the form of warrants called equity participation notes. The two-year loan will carry an interest rate of Libor plus 8.5 percentage points. (Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is a common short-term lending benchmark.)

The loan is secured by AIG's assets, including its profitable insurance businesses, giving the Fed some protection even if markets continue to sink. And if AIG rebounds, taxpayers could reap a big profit through the government's equity stake.

"This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, with the least possible disruption to the overall economy," the Fed said in a statement.

It puts the government in control of a private insurer -- a historic development, particularly considering that AIG isn't directly regulated by the federal government. The Fed took the highly unusual step using legal authority granted in the Federal Reserve Act, which allows it to lend to nonbanks under "unusual and exigent" circumstances, something it invoked when Bear Stearns Cos. was rescued in March.

As part of the deal, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson insisted that AIG's chief executive, Robert Willumstad, step aside. Mr. Paulson personally told Mr. Willumstad the news in a phone call on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the call.

Mr. Willumstad will be succeeded by Edward Liddy, the former head of insurer Allstate Corp.

AIG's bailout caps a tumultuous 10 days that have remade the American financial system. In that time, the government has engineered rescues that insert it deep into the housing and insurance industries, while Wall Street has watched two of its last four big independent brokerage firms exit the scene.

The U.S. on Sept. 6 took over mortgage-lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they teetered near collapse. This Sunday, the U.S. refused to bail out Wall Street pillar Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy-court protection and is now being sold off in pieces. That same day, another struggling Wall Street titan, Merrill Lynch & Co., agreed to sell itself to Bank of America Corp.

View Slideshow
.The AIG deal followed a day of high drama in Washington. The Treasury's Mr. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke convened in the early evening an unexpected meeting of top congressional leaders. Late in the trading day Tuesday, anticipation that the government might assist the insurer helped propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a 1.3% gain.

In bailing out AIG, the Federal Reserve appeared to be motivated in part by worries that Wall Street's financial crisis could begin to spill over into seemingly safe investments held by small investors, such as money-market funds that invest in AIG debt.

Indeed, on Tuesday the $62 billion Primary Fund from the Reserve, a New York money-market firm, said it "broke the buck" -- that is, its net asset value fell below the $1-a-share level that funds like this must maintain. Breaking the buck is an extremely rare occurrence. The fund was pinched by investments in bonds issued by now collapsing Lehman Brothers.

Money-market funds are supposed to be among the safest investments available. No fund in the $3.6 trillion money-market industry has lost money since 1994, when Orange County, Calif., went bankrupt. A number of money-market funds own securities issued by AIG. The firm is also a big insurer of some money-market instruments.

Credit Downgrade
AIG's financial crisis intensified Monday night when its credit rating was downgraded, forcing it to post $14.5 billion in collateral. The insurer has far more than that in assets that it could sell, but it could not get the cash quickly enough to satisfy the collateral demands. That explains the interest in obtaining a bridge loan to carry it through. AIG's board approved the rescue Tuesday night.

AIG's board said in a statement that the deal would "protect all AIG policyholders, address rating agency concerns and give AIG the time necessary to conduct asset sales on an orderly basis."

The final decision to help AIG came Tuesday as the federal government concluded it would be "catastrophic" to allow the insurer to fail, according to a person familiar with the matter. Over the weekend, federal officials had tried to get the private sector to pony up some funds. But when that effort failed, Fed Chairman Bernanke, New York Fed President Timothy Geithner and Treasury Secretary Paulson concluded that federal assistance was needed to avert an AIG bankruptcy, which they feared could have disastrous repercussions.

Staff from the Federal Reserve and Treasury worked on the plan through Monday night. President George W. Bush was briefed on the rescue Tuesday afternoon during a meeting of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets.

That the government would prop up AIG financially offers a stark indication of the breadth of the insurer's role in the global economy. If it were to have trouble meeting its obligations, the potential domino effect could reach around the world.

For one thing, banks and mutual funds are major holders of AIG's debt and could take a hit if the insurer were to default. In addition, AIG was a major seller of "credit-default swaps," essentially insurance against default on assets tied to corporate debt and mortgage securities. Weakness at AIG could force financial institutions in the U.S., Europe and Asia that bought these swaps to take write-downs or losses.

Crisis on Wall Street
Real Time Econ: Here Be Dragons | Fed's 'Unusual and Exigent' ClauseGreenberg's Letter to AIG CEO WillumstadWash Wire: Bush Not to Comment on Paulson MeetingCrisis Blog: Questions and Answers on AIGAIG, Lehman Shock Hits World MarketsOld-School Banks Emerge on TopComplete Coverage: Wall Street in Crisis.AIG's millions of insurance policyholders appear to be considerably less at risk. That's because of how the company is structured and regulated. Its insurance policies are issued by separate subsidiaries of AIG, highly regulated units that have assets available to pay claims. In the U.S., those assets can't be shifted out of the subsidiaries without regulatory approval, and insurance is also regulated strictly abroad.

Tuesday afternoon, after the market closed, AIG put out a statement saying its basic insurance and retirement services businesses are "fully capable of meeting their obligations to policyholders." AIG said it was trying to "increase short-term liquidity in the parent company," but said that didn't "include any effort to reduce the capital of any of its subsidiaries or to tap into Asian operations for liquidity." Asia is one of AIG's largest markets.

Financial Pain
Where the company is feeling financial pain is at the corporate level, even while its insurance operations are healthy.

The urgency of federal aid came into stark relief Tuesday as other options fell off the table and pressures continued to build. On Tuesday, AIG's attempt to raise as much as $75 billion from private-sector banks failed. The banks advising the firm concluded it would be all but impossible to organize a loan of that size, making the government AIG's chief hope.

As a result of its credit downgrades, the insurer has to post $14.5 billion in collateral to bolster its credit rating. In the debt markets, AIG also has to post additional collateral to investment banks and others it trades with.

Adding to AIG's woes, investors continued to pummel the company's stock on Tuesday, pushing the share price down 21%, to $3.75. It was the third double-digit percentage decline in the past three trading days. AIG's shares are now down 94% for the year.

AIG's cash squeeze is driven in large part by losses in a unit separate from its traditional insurance businesses. That financial-products unit, which has been a part of AIG for years, sold the credit-default swap contracts designed to protect investors against default in an array of assets, including subprime mortgages.

But as the housing market has crumbled, the value of those contracts has dropped sharply, driving $18 billion in losses over the past three quarters and forcing AIG to put up billions of dollars in collateral. AIG raised $20 billion earlier this year. But the ongoing demands are straining the holding company's resources.

That strain contributed to the ratings downgrades on Monday. Those downgrades, in turn, ratcheted up the pressure on the company to come up with more cash, quickly.

Most insurance companies don't have financial-products units like these. But over nearly four decades, former CEO, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg built AIG into a firm that resembled no other. He transformed its insurance business, both by expanding abroad -- notably in China, where AIG has its roots -- and by buying up other firms.

AIG is just one member of one consortium expected to be bidding on the project.

Originally Posted by Richard

Well like I said

Rockfish not everyone here is a longshoreman and not everyone appreciates the cost of paying for a week of demurrage on goods to inflate the income made in just one occupation longshoring due to a bottleneck. Status quo provides planty of overtime for a single occupation but it adds costs for every other American.

Richard, I can appreciate where you are going with this, but do you really think the savings will be passed on to the consumer? I think not. The cost of new housing is proof.