Chinese Bid for Unocal: More than Meets the Eye(COONC ties to WH)

[maddezmom]

The June 23, 2005 announcement by China’s largest state-owned company, China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC Ltd.) of an unsolicited bid for Unocal, a California-based United States oil company and ninth in U.S. oil production, has been received with considerable reservations. It is that which is not known about the bid and its motivations which present a tremendous task ahead for the U.S. Congress and Wall Street. A Communist country wishing to embed itself in the U.S. economy with ramifications tied to national security is unprecedented, along with it actually being taken seriously by the U.S. government.
~snip~

Earlier this year International Business Machines Corp. was sold to the Lenovo Group of China, which met with disapproval from Congress. As a direct result IBM sought out former National Security Advisor to both President Ford and President H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, to help seal the deal. But in the Unocal deal, CNOOC CEO, Fu Chengyu, has engaged no less than three U.S. investment banks, four law firms, two media communications groups and some with direct connections to the White House.

The investment banking firms presently on board are J.P Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. To deal with political and policy hurdles CNOOC hired lobbying law firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, located in Dallas and well connected to both Democrats and Republicans and which represented Halliburton when Vice President Dick Cheney was Chairman. Media firm, Public Strategies, Inc., a public relations company out of Austin, TX led President Bush’s 2004 re-election media campaign and its point person is Mark Palmer, former Enron Corp. communications director. The Brunswick Group which specializes in mergers and acquisitions will also oversee public affairs work.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow appeared before a Senate committee just days before the announced CNOOC bid, and conveniently made a comparison to Japan’s U.S. investments of the 1980’s. But the current Chinese agenda is actually quite different. Japan remains an ally of the U.S. Japan depended on the U.S. for help on defense with U.S. military bases throughout Japan and was not a major competitor for rare resources or strategic assets which impact national security.

more:http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2005/Jun/EEN42c210324ee80.html

[pnorman]

1. "International Business Machines Corp. was sold to the Lenovo Group"

From what I can gather, it was just the PC division of IBM that was sold to a Chinese outfit. I doubt there's any meaningful connection to their mainframes, so it isn't as startling as it first appeared

pnorman