The explicit and veiled pressures and threats distributed to the right and left in these first weeks by Donald Trump when he returned to being the number one tenant of the White House also affected the Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings Group which today announced its decision to sell its 90% stake in Hutchison Ports PPC (Panama Ports Company) to the consortium set up by the company American investment company BlackRock and its investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), of which it has recently completed the acquisition, and from the Luxembourg-based Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), the group's terminal operator Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).

But US pressure was perhaps not at the basis of CK Hutchison's decision to divest itself of these assets port as the consortium will not only go to the activities of the Hong Kong group, but another slice of much more substantial business than the Chinese group that evidently it required very prolonged and previous negotiations The statements of the tycoon-president. To BlackRock, GIP and TiL, in fact, the participation of CK will also go Hutchison in the terminal group Hutchison Port Holdings (Hutchison Ports) which is equal to 80% of the company's capital, sale which provides for controlling interests also in the Group's subsidiaries and which will give the consortium the ownership and/or management of 199 docks in 43 ports in 23 countries as well as in all the HPH equipment and related activities. From the sale it is excluding the Hutchison Port Holdings Trust (HPH Trust) of Singapore, which operates container terminals in the Chinese ports of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Hizhou as well as river ports in the country and in which CK Hutchison owns approximately 30% of the capital.

CK Hutchison announced that the total enterprise value of the companies covered by the agreement, including Panama Ports Company, It amounts to $22.8 billion.

Commenting on the transaction, the president of TiL and president of the MSCm group Diego Aponte, recalled that the relationship with Hutchison Ports "dates back to a long time ago and is a relationship of mutual respect and friendship. Furthermore - he added - we are very pleased to partner with BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners with whom we share a beautiful long-standing relationship. We high esteem for the management team of Hutchison Ports and, If this transaction is completed, we do not see the time to welcome them into our extended family. We are very focused on this sector and we know that investing in Hutchison Ports will be a very profitable investment from the from a commercial point of view".

PPC is the enterprise that owns and operates Panamanian ports of Balboa and Cristobal and whose work, being owned by had been questioned by Trump, together with the same Panama Canal property, in the first days of its inception of his second presidential term ( of 21 and 23 January January 2025). Trump's utterances, although rejected disdainfully by the President of the Republic of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, had had immediate effect in the same Central American nation, with the Contraloría General de la República de Panamá which had announced an audit on the Panama Ports Company and with the presentation of a complaint to the Panamanian Supreme Court of Justice for the alleged unconstitutionality of the law he had approved the concession contract held by PPC ( of 27 January and 4 February 2025). CK Hutchison said the deal for the sale of the PPC will be signed by next April 2nd.