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WASHINGTON — Initial flight tests have found that jet fuel made partly of camelina, algae or other biofeed stocks can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes by more than 50 percent, doesn’t affect performance and presents no technical or safety problems, a top Boeing official said Thursday.

"It meets all jet fuel requirements and then some," said Billy Glover, who heads Boeing’s environmental strategy group.

Glover said a full report on the test flights would be released next month and aviation biofuel could be approved for use as early as next year. Despite its promise, however, Glover said the real problem is how quickly growers can start producing and refiners processing enough biofuel to make it an alternative to the Jet A fuel used today.

Aircraft account for about 3 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, the principal greenhouse gas, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Though Boeing doesn’t expect much growth in aircraft carbon dioxide emissions, some have estimated they could triple by 2050.

Boeing, Virgin Atlantic, New Zealand Air, Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines, along with GE Aircraft Engines, have conducted four tests using a mixture of biofuel and regular jet fuel over the past 15 months. The planes involved included wide-body 747s and single-aisle 737s. The biofuels included blends of babassu, oil from sustainably grown coconuts, jatropha, algae and camelina.

Babassu oil comes from a tree that grows in the Amazon region of South America. Jatropha is a scrub brush that grows on marginal farmlands. Camelina, which provided oil for lamps in the days of the Roman Empire but for centuries was dismissed as little more than a weed, also can be grown on marginal lands, perhaps in rotation with such crops as dry-land wheat.

Of all the crops, camelina, for now, holds the most promise, Glover said.

Molecular biologists at Targeted Growth, a Seattle company, have used genetic engineering to develop a super strain of camelina seeds that are being sown on tens of thousands of acres in eastern Washington, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota, said Thomas Todaro, the company’s chief executive paydayloans.

Eventually, camelina could be grown on more than 10 million acres in the U.S.

In addition to the five states where it’s now grown, Todaro said, it could be grown in eastern Oregon, in high plains states such as Texas and Oklahoma, and even as far east as North Carolina and Georgia.

"This year, there were three times more requests for our seeds than we were able to provide," he said.

While reluctant to call camelina a wonder plant, Todaro said it could produce 100 to 200 gallons of camelina oil an acre, or about 1 billion gallons a year. The plant also grows well in Australia, Canada and central Europe. Todaro said it wouldn’t compete with others crops, such as wheat and corn, because it can be grown on marginal lands or in rotation, and doesn’t require irrigation or heavy use of petroleum-based fertilizers.

Although the world’s airlines consume about 65 billion gallons of fuel a year, Todaro and Glover said that camelina would be a good start.

In addition, Glover said the test show a camelina blend of aviation fuel reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 percent, more than any other biofeed stock.

"Camelina is very encouraging, but we need a portfolio of things," he said.

While algae may be the most promising biofuel, it’s still eight to 10 years away from full-scale production, Todaro and Glover said.

The test flights lasted a total of less than six hours, but Glover said the biofuels have been thoroughly tested in the laboratory. The Air Force and Boeing competitor Airbus have also been working to develop aviation biofuel.

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India’s budget deficit widened to a seven-year high as the government increased spending, putting the nation’s credit ratings at risk.

The shortfall climbed to 3.3 trillion rupees (69.95 billion) or 6.2 percent of gross domestic product in the fiscal year to March 2009, the government said in New Delhi today. That was more than the 2.5 percent initially estimated last year and February’s revised 6 percent figure.

India’s Baa2 credit rating may come under pressure if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can’t rein in a widening budget deficit, Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday. Singh’s government, which won a second five-year term this month, is borrowing more to fund three stimulus packages to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

“The government’s fiscal situation will remain precarious this year as well due to higher expenditure,” said Dharmakirti Joshi, an economist at Mumbai-based Crisil Ltd., the local unit of Standard & Poor’s. “Balancing the fiscal stress and sustaining the growth momentum will remain a key challenge for the new government.”

Moody’s yesterday said the inability of the government “to meaningfully adjust fiscal policies and push ahead with reforms could pressurize the foreign currency credit rating.”

Central bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao early this month expressed concern over the widening deficit and on May 22 said a rising budget shortfall to finance more fiscal stimulus may prevent interest rates from declining.

‘Higher Priority’

The shortfall is the amount the government needs to borrow to bridge the difference between spending and non-debt receipts no faxing payday loan. A wider budget deficit may lead to higher government borrowing.

India’s deficit widened as tax collections slowed amid weaker economic growth. The government received 4.47 trillion rupees of tax revenue, less than the 4.65 trillion rupee target.

India plans to borrow a record 3.62 trillion rupees ($76 billion) in the current fiscal year that started April 1 and estimates the budget shortfall at 5.5 percent of GDP.

Sustaining economic growth is a “higher priority at this moment” over sovereign ratings, India’s Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla said May 27. India has asked the rating agencies to explain the rationale behind their recent warnings, he said.

India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on May 27 said the government will continue to step up spending this year to support growth, risking a wider budget deficit.

Singh’s government has unveiled three stimulus packages since December, including lowering retail fuel prices, cutting taxes on consumer products and injecting capital into state-run banks, to shield the economy from the global crisis.

The $1.2 trillion economy may grow by between 6 percent in the current fiscal year, the slowest pace of expansion since 2003, according to the central bank.

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It’s coming down to the wire for General Motors.

With GM rapidly burning through its cash reserves due to hefty losses amid an historic slump in auto sales, President Obama said the Treasury Department would give the automaker the cash it needs to continue operations on the condition that GM restructure its debt or file for bankruptcy by June 1.

The automaker set a May 26 deadline for its bondholders to reach a restructuring agreement. GM chief executive officer Fritz Henderson has repeatedly said that the difficulty in inking a deal makes a bankruptcy filing for the automaker "probable."

A spokeswoman for GM said Friday the company continues to plan for a bankruptcy, which is the likely next step if no agreement is reached.

A deal with bondholders is one of the last major hurdles for GM (GM, Fortune 500) to clear in order to avoid bankruptcy. GM has reached agreements with the United Auto Workers and Canadian Auto Workers unions that will allow the company to reduce some of its labor and retiree health care costs. The Canadian deal was ratified by union members on Sunday; the UAW vote is expected to be completed later this week.

Rival Chrysler, which has also received billions of dollars from the federal government, filed for bankruptcy last month despite reaching a deal with the UAW, after several bondholders held out of the restructuring agreement.

So if GM cannot work out a deal with bondholders, it could file for bankruptcy as early as some time next week.

Bondholders key to avoiding Chapter 11

Still, bankruptcy is not a done deal.

"In very hostile negotiations, most of the progress is made at the 11th hour," said Edward Neiger, founder of Neiger LLP, a creditors’ rights and bankruptcy law firm. "It’s very hard to predict what the outcome will be until the 11th hour, when the parties often realize the alternative is worse for both of them."

To avoid bankruptcy, GM would need to convince the bondholders to accept a much reduced stake in the company.

GM’s proposal would give bondholders a 10% stake in the automaker, even though they currently own about 40% of the company’s debt. The Treasury would get about a 50% stake in GM.

Bondholders have issued a counteroffer that would give them a 58% stake in the company. The Treasury, however, would not receive any stake in GM, and the automaker would remain liable to pay back the money that the government has lent it.

Late Friday GM said it borrowed an additional $4 billion from the U car insurance companies.S. government making a total of $19.4 billion borrowed from the Treasury Department.

Under both plans, the UAW would receive about a 40% stake in the company.

Henderson has suggested that it will be up to the government, not GM, to determine whether bondholders should get a better deal, but the government has not given any sign it will adjust its offer.

The Treasury has indicated it wants to protect the interest of the taxpayers who have given billions to the automaker. A spokeswoman for the Treasury said Friday the government continues to work with all stakeholders to reach an agreement.

But Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Friday that more negotiations "must take place soon and at an expedited pace."

"Bondholders must have a seat at the table during negotiations in how the company would be restructured. The company, the government, the union and the bondholders should negotiate details of a reasonable debt-to-equity swap before stepping into court," Hensarling wrote.

Bankruptcy would be bad for investors, suppliers and dealers

Should GM file for bankruptcy, the court will determine just what debts will be paid to various creditors. Bondholders could end up with a better deal than GM’s offer, and many appear willing to take that gamble.

GM’s stockholders, however, would likely be cleaned out. Although many GM shareholders have essentially been wiped out already. The stock currently trades for about $1.40 a share, more than 90% lower than year-ago levels.

Auto parts suppliers could also take a hit. GM pays its parts makers an average of $2 billion a month. The company would be able to pay some of the money it owes suppliers, but only those whom the court determines to be "critical vendors."

The fate of many GM dealers could also be decided by a bankruptcy court. GM notified 1,100 of the 6,000 dealerships in its network that it would be terminating their contracts next year. Some of those dealers would likely close this year.

Some dealers are hopeful that state franchise laws could protect them from having to be shut down, but many legal experts have said that the dealers will face an uphill battle if GM actually does wind up filing for bankruptcy.

– CNNMoney.com senior writer Chris Isidore and CNN Congressional producer Deirdre Walsh contributed to this story. 

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Concerns about the debt burden facing countries trying to spend their way out of the economic downturn spooked investors on Thursday despite optimism from President Barack Obama that the U.S. economy was past the worst.

“It’s safe to say we have stepped back from the brink,” Obama told a fundraiser in Beverly Hills. “There is some calm that didn’t exist before.”

But despite increasingly upbeat comments from policymakers, global markets have focused on the extra debt governments are taking on to fund their stimulus packages, ever since Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook for Britain’s sovereign credit ratings to negative a week ago.

That prompted scrutiny of other major economies — including the United States — where concerns about the U.S. debt mountain sent Treasury prices and stocks tumbling on Wednesday.

Asian stocks fell in turn on Thursday and European bourses were expected to open lower, taking their cue from Wall Street’s weakness.

Global markets are also watching developments in the U.S. auto industry, where General Motors Corp moved closer to filing the largest bankruptcy ever for a U.S. industrial company after a crucial bond exchange proposal failed.

GM said in a statement an offer to exchange $27 billion in bond debt for a 10 percent stake in a reorganized company by a midnight deadline had fallen far short of the 90 percent acceptance target.

GM FACES BANKRUPTCY, OPEL FUTURE UNCERTAIN

GM’s board was expected to meet this week to consider the dwindling options available, but the company is widely anticipated to follow fellow U no credit check pay day loans.S. automaker Chrysler into bankruptcy.

Chrysler faces a key court hearing on Thursday expected to clear the way for Fiat SpA, along with labor unions and the U.S. and Canadian governments, to take control of a restructured company in exchange for $2 billion paid to lenders.

The U.S. government-brokered bankruptcy for Chrysler has been seen as a test case for the more complex and larger filing expected from GM in the next few days.

In Germany, talks on shielding GM’s European brand Opel from the looming bankruptcy of its parent ended without a resolution. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said he hoped a deal could be reached on Friday, but said there was “surprise and disappointment” with the stance of U.S. negotiators.

Ministers said the battle for Opel had narrowed to a two-way race between Fiat and Canadian auto parts company Magna. But choosing a final bidder for Opel and closing a deal could take months — time neither the carmaker nor the German government have with GM’s bankruptcy looming.

To tide Opel over, Germany has put together a 1.5 billion euro ($2.1 billion) aid package. But it has made this aid contingent on the U.S. government and GM agreeing to its plan to temporarily place Opel assets in a trust, a move that would protect its patents and technology from GM creditors.

Ministers said they expected answers from the United States by Friday to allow the bailout to proceed. 

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NEW YORK — Target Corp. is going bananas to keep up with Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The discounter has long sold groceries. But it is barely holding onto its customers while its chief rival, Wal-Mart, is rapidly picking up new shoppers as its powerful low-cost message resonates in the recession. So Minneapolis-based Target plans to stock more fresh food — including bananas — and play up its low prices.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is expanding its selection of nonessentials like home furnishings, while improving the quality of its store-brand food like thin-crust pizza and ice cream.

Facing criticism from Wall Street analysts who believe it’s been late to respond to the recession, Target — which is about one-sixth the size of Wal-Mart — is becoming more vulnerable. But New York-based retail consultant Walter Loeb says Target has "plenty of opportunities to get better," particularly in groceries, and is making the right moves.
Target’s cheap chic mantra — its advantage in boom times — became a drag in late 2007 as the recession began and shoppers focused on basics. At the same time, Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., found a balance of merchandise and marketing to enhance its renewed focus on price.

Target’s same-store sales — the comparison of sales at stores open at least a year and a key indicator of a retailer’s health — has lagged Wal-Mart’s since late 2007 fast cash. In the most recent quarter, sales at established Target stores dropped 3.7 percent, while the indicator rose 3.7 percent at Wal-Mart, excluding fuel.

"Consumers are buying what they need to have, so Target is stuck where they are, because that’s the mouse trap they built," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of retail consulting and investment banking firm Davidowitz & Associates. "Wal-Mart is pounding away at its price message relentlessly."

While Target wants to keep its innovative edge, for growth, it is clearly turning to groceries, including the introduction late last year in some of its general merchandise stores — as opposed to its supercenters — of prepackaged perishables like bananas and bagged lettuce. It plans to expand the concept to 100 new or remodeled stores by year’s end.

Target also is testing a "low-price" promise in advertising for certain locations. It’s also relaunching its store-label Target Brand as Up & Up, to span 40 categories such as health and beauty items by summer when new marketing begins.

But Wal-Mart keeps rolling out new programs too. Wal-Mart relaunched its Great Value food brand in March with an improved selection and reformulated recipes, and it is revamping its electronics aisles and adding exclusive home furnishing brands.

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Boeing Co. leaders say that the U.S. military’s airlift needs are growing and that a Pentagon proposal to halt future orders for the C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane is premature.

Boeing, whose defense unit is headquartered in St. Louis, is trying to rally support for the C-17 on multiple fronts — arguing that ceasing production would erode the U.S. industrial base, costing thousands of jobs at Boeing plants and those of its main suppliers. But Boeing officials also emphasize the plane’s strategic value.

"Right now, since 9/11, the airplane has been flying at about a 15 percent higher rate than was anticipated," said Donald A. Anderson, Boeing’s C-17 program manager in St. Louis. "In addition, they’re talking about rebasing troops in the United States. They’re talking about an increase in the size of the Marines Corps and the Army.

"So it seems like the airlift requirements are growing. And you need airlifters to meet those needs."

Starting with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ announcement in early April and continuing through last week, the Pentagon has said it can get by with the 205 C-17s that are either in service or on order. The Air Force also uses the Lockheed Martin C-5 Galaxy to transport weapon systems, cargo and personnel to overseas locations.

Republican Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, both of Missouri, have written letters supporting more orders of the C-17, and Machinists Union officials have traveled to Washington to show their support for a program that supports 900 jobs in St. Louis.

"This is high political theater," said analyst Richard Aboulafia of The Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. "The bottom line is I don’t think the line is threatened. But it is up to everybody from Department of Defense to Congress to Boeing to the unions to make it look as though it were."

The Defense Department has not sought funding for the C-17 in the last three years. But Congress has stepped in to add funding for more of the $202 million planes through supplemental defense appropriations bills.

Bond and Boeing officials have asked why Gates would halt C-17 orders while there is a study under way into the military’s future air-mobility needs. The results are expected this fall.

"But yet we’re making that decision now to stop the airplane," Anderson said. "So it seems somewhat premature fast payday loans."

Bond said shutting down production of the C-17 is a "dangerous gamble" and warned that the U.S. can’t afford to "lose the capability to transport safely our troops and equipment to anywhere in the world."

In a letter to President Barack Obama, McCaskill said the U.S. is "literally flying the wings off these planes," and added "this is not the time to end its production, especially in light of projected global mission sets for the U.S. military."

Both legislators also have gone to bat for Boeing’s St. Louis-built F/A-18 Super Hornet, whose future was placed in limbo under the latest Pentagon spending plan.

The C-17 is assembled at a plant in Long Beach, Calif. But the cargo door, cargo ramp, landing-gear pods, nose and engine pylons are built in St. Louis.

A November 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office recommended "careful planning to avoid shutting down the C-17 line prematurely." Both Boeing and the Air Force believe shutting down and restarting production "would not be feasible or cost effective," the report found.

The GAO cited the high costs of hiring and training a new work force, reinstalling equipment to proper working condition and re-establishing a supplier base.

Boeing has delivered the C-17 to other countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The United Arab Emirates has announced its intent to buy four of the planes, and Qatar has ordered two and exercised an option on two additional C-17s.

But Anderson said international sales alone are not enough to sustain the C-17 line. Boeing officials say maintaining C-17 sales to the U.S. Air Force is necessary to keep the price of the planes competitive in the international market.

Defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said the C-17 is the best strategic airlifter ever built and "a very cogent case" can be made that terminating production at 205 planes would be too early. At the moment, he said, its future will be dictated by Congress.

"Here’s the bottom line to C-17," Thompson said. "If Congress doesn’t add money, there won’t be any more."

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General Motors’ Opel unit could go bankrupt but this would be the worst possible scenario, the premiers of North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Opel’s home state of Hesse said on Monday.

Hesse’s Roland Koch and NRW premier Juergen Ruettgers told reporters they could not rule out any option for Opel, including insolvency. But Ruettgers said he did not expect the German carmaker to become insolvent instant credit report.

He added he was pleased that Canadian car parts group Magna and rival bidder Fiat were ready to improve their offers. Ruettgers said he expected a decision on a preferred Opel bidder by mid-week.

(Reporting by Thorsten Severin, Writing by Sarah Marsh)

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NEW YORK–Aluminum demand will get a lift as auto manufacturers design and build lighter passenger vehicles to comply with President Barack Obama’s plan to cut U.S. auto emissions, but the ramping up process will take several years.

"Looking at it from a long-term view, yes, this is definitely a positive for aluminum consumption. But it’s not going to happen overnight," said Gayle Berry, metals analyst at Barclays Capital in London.

Obama this week proposed the strictest plan ever to increase federal fuel standards for passenger cars and trucks. The rule, effective in 2012, would require the U.S. passenger vehicle fleet to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil.

Vehicles must be lighter to meet those goals. Analysts see aluminum as the biggest base metals beneficiary. Materials such as plastics, carbon fibre and light-weight steel will also see greater use. But many give aluminum the edge because of its light weight and characteristics such as strength, flexibility, anti-corrosiveness and recyclability no checking account payday advance.

"Pressure to be more fuel-efficient benefits aluminum versus other materials. We see the outlook for more fuel-efficient vehicles as clearly positive for aluminum," said Jorge Vazquez, vice president of aluminum intelligence at Harbor Intelligence in Texas.

For years, aluminum producers have worked closely with automakers to promote the metal, which now dominates applications like vehicle bumpers, wheels, seat holdings, and many others.

By 2009, aluminum reached an all-time high of 8.6 per cent of the average North American vehicle weight, said the Aluminum Association, which expects that content to grow to an average 11 per cent of car and light truck weight by 2020.

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DETROIT — General Motors reached a deal Thursday with its union on concessions and is now racing the clock to persuade its bondholders to eliminate $27 billion in debt and avoid a bankruptcy filing.

GM has until Tuesday to persuade thousands of bondholders to agree to swap their debt for equity, which would fulfill its last significant requirement for restructuring ordered by President Barack Obama.

But there appears to be little chance that the required 90 percent of bondholders will agree to its terms, making the prospect of bankruptcy increasingly likely for GM, the nation’s largest automaker.

Analysts said the United Auto Workers’ deal with GM, which followed similar concessions to Chrysler, will increase pressure on bondholders to accept the company’s offer.

"I think there’s a shot it will succeed, but a very small one," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

A coalition of small bondholders protested the terms of GM’s offer in Washington on Thursday. Larger, institutional bondholders have also opposed the deal, which calls for them to receive 225 shares of GM stock in exchange for each $1,000 worth of debt.

A GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said the company has made no decision on whether to extend the exchange offer beyond the Tuesday deadline.

GM, subsisting on $15.4 billion in government loans, has until June 1 to meet the broad criteria for restructuring spelled out by a special presidential auto task force.

Under a plan announced in April, the Treasury Department would control at least 50 percent of the stock in a restructured GM. A health care trust for union retirees would have about 39 percent, with bondholders getting 10 percent and current shareholders the remaining 1 percent.

Advisers to a committee of GM’s biggest bondholders, representing about 20 percent of the $27 billion in bond debt, have repeatedly criticized the plan. They have also accused the government of seeking to use them as scapegoats for a potential bankruptcy filing. Under their own proposal, GM bondholders would own 58 percent of the reorganized carmaker. These advisers have said they are willing to negotiate with the company and the government but have made no headway thus far individual health insurance quote.

As for the UAW, details of its agreement with GM are being withheld pending a ratification vote by 61,000 U.S. union workers, expected to take place next week. But the deal does include financing the retiree trust. People close to the talks said the union agreed to allow GM to finance half of its future retiree health care costs — estimated at $20 billion — with stock.

The UAW’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, had been critical of GM’s plans to cut an additional 21,000 union jobs, as well as increase its imports of vehicles made in China, South Korea and Mexico. Whether those job cuts are addressed in the agreement is unclear.

"The union has worked very well to create the right optics and to be in sync with the message the White House has put out there," said John Casesa, a principal in the automotive consulting firm Casesa Shapiro Group.

The UAW’s deal with GM follows a similar health care agreement it reached with Chrysler, which is also surviving off government loans. Despite the agreement, Chrysler was forced to file for bankruptcy after it failed to persuade a group of banks and hedge funds to agree to take cash payments to retire $6.9 billion in debt.

GM’s president, Fritz Henderson, has said repeatedly that bankruptcy is a "probable" outcome because of the difficulty in persuading 90 percent of the bondholders to agree to its restructuring terms.

In the event of a bankruptcy filing, the bondholders may be offered less attractive terms in exchange for their debt.

"The financial community and the union trust have been in competition for this stock," Cole of the Center for Automotive Research said.

"But with the union deal settled, the pressure is only going to increase on the bondholders."

GM employs more than 1,700 workers at its Wentzville plant, the GMC Savana and Chevy Express full-size vans are made.

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Singapore’s Temasek defended its money-losing exit from Bank of America, saying the U.S.-centric bank did not fit its investment criteria and the risk was perceived to be greater than the expected return.

The explanation, a rarity for the state investor, came in a letter to major Singapore newspapers after the loss on BofA attracted fierce criticism from the usually muted pro-government local media, investors and independent blogs, which noted BofA shares have rallied more than 70 percent after Temasek’s exit.

The losses are also expected to be discussed when Singapore’s Parliament convenes next week.

Temasek, which is headed by Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore’s prime minister, sold its 3 percent stake in BofA in the first quarter after converting its Merrill shares into BofA in January. Temasek has not said how much it lost in the process, but Reuters estimated the loss was more than $3 billion.

Temasek announced in February that Ho will step down and be replaced by Chip Goodyear, the former CEO of BHP Billiton, on October 1.

“Our investment thesis had changed from Merrill’s specific businesses to the more diversified BoA linkage to the broader U.S. economy. The risk-return environment had also changed substantially,” Myrna Thomas, managing director for corporate affairs, said in the letter.

Temasek’s aim is to ensure that its portfolio delivers returns that are higher than the cost of capital employed on a risk-adjusted basis, Thomas said.

“We may choose to divest an investment, even at a loss, to optimize our risk or portfolio exposure, or if there are better opportunities elsewhere or later,” she added payday advances.

Temasek, which like other sovereign wealth funds, plowed billions into Merrill Lynch in the early phase of the credit crisis, saw the value of its portfolio plunge 31 percent to S$127 billion between March 31 and Nov 30 last year during the severe market turmoil.

KEY QUESTION UNANSWERED

Financial investments accounted for 40 percent of its portfolio.

“The letter doesn’t give the answer that everybody is asking. How much did they lose?,” Leong Sze Hian, president of the Society of Financial Services Professionals, told Reuters.

The exact losses are difficult to quantify because Temasek had also offloaded about 30 million Merrill shares last year in smaller lots, reducing its exposure to the investment bank by the time BofA took over Merrill.

Conraj Raj, editor-at-large at the Today newspaper in Singapore, threw the spotlight on the sovereign wealth fund’s stated strategy of taking a long-term view of its investments.

“After all, it has been drummed into us ad nauseam that both Temasek and its cousin, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, invest for the long term with a time horizon that could stretch for as long as 50 years,” he wrote on May 18. 

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