I-Banks: Asian Investment Scorecard

By Paul Kedrosky · Friday, December 21, 2007 ·

You can't tell your players without a scorecard, so here is a quick list of the major U.S. investment banks and the Asian investor who has made a recent cash infusion:

Bank Investor Amount
Morgan Stanley China Investment Corp $5b
Merrill Temasek (Singapore) $5b
Citigroup Abu Dhabi $7.5b
UBS Singapore Investment Corp $9.75b
Bear Stearns Citic $1b

The interesting thing here, of course, isn't the dollars, per se. It's the speed with which this all came together, given the high-profile targets and the Asian capital, and how blithely usually skittish U.S. politicos gave it a pass. What happened to the ports scandal of a few years ago? Isn't financial data more precious than ports? How long until foreign control of the U.S. (investment) banking system becomes a political crises this election year?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this needs to be a scandal, at least not, bank misbehaviors aside, the investments themselves. But it is remarkable how dull we all are if we think that this won't eventually cross from economic to political.

Updated: Error in prior version.

1