Panama Ports: $23 Billion Deal’s Biggest Winner Is MSC, Not BlackRock – Forbes

President Donald Trump has touted a deal involving a “large US company” acquiring two ports on the Panama Canal.

Even before the CK Hutchison deal, MSC had spent more than $40 billion since January 2022. I Photo: Isaías Montilla

The deal he was referring to was the sale of 43 ports owned by billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Hong Kong-based conglomerate, CK Hutchison, to a group led by asset manager BlackRock for $23 billion.

However, the two Panama ports were just a small part of the transaction, Forbes Daily reported.

What Trump didn’t mention is that Terminal Investment Ltd., one of the two partners in the deal, is an arm of the Swiss shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC). MSC was co-founded in 1970 by Swiss-Italian billionaires Gianluigi and Rafaela Aponte.

This acquisition will make MSC the largest port operator in the world.

MSC owns 70% of Terminal Investment, while investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP)—led by US billionaire Adebayo “Bayo” Ogunlesi and now owned by BlackRock, which acquired it for $12.5 billion in October—holds 20%.

The Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC owns the remaining 10%.

Even before the CK Hutchison deal, MSC had spent more than $40 billion since January 2022, according to Forbes estimates, investing in everything from new ports to hospitals and even a high-speed rail company in Italy.

The bulk of that investment went into new ships. Over the past three years, MSC has purchased or ordered 370 vessels for more than $31 billion, according to ship valuation experts VesselsValue.

Ownership of MSC is split equally between Gianluigi Aponte and his wife, Rafaela Aponte-Diamant. Forbes estimates their net worth at $37.5 billion each, making Aponte-Diamant the richest self-made woman in the world.