solypsist
04-19-2006, 02:31
A U.S. lawmaker on Tuesday fumed that the Bush administration refused to divulge anything about a security review it is conducting of a Dubai-owned company that is planning to take over several plants in the U.S. that make equipment for defense contractors.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency panel led by the Treasury Department, is reviewing the $1.24 billion takeover of Doncasters, a British engineering group with U.S. holdings, by state-owned Dubai International Capital.
Doncasters has plants in nine U.S. locations making parts for defense contractors. The Dubai takeover has sparked security concerns from Rep. John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, who represents a district which has a plant that makes tank engines.
Barrow said the Treasury Department's reluctance to discuss the latest proposal with him suggested it had learned little from the congressional outcry over a now-abandoned deal that would have allowed another Dubai company to take over some U.S. port operations.
"If I can't find out from my own government what is going on, it ain't congressional oversight," Barrow said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
"We (lawmakers) can't find out things ... We have no reason to believe they (the administration) are doing anything other than sleepwalking through the review process," he said.
The Doncasters deal has strong parallels to the ports saga. Both deals involve state-owned Dubai companies purchasing British companies with U.S. assets. In the ports case, Dubai Ports World bought a British company that operated U.S. port terminals.
CFIUS, which vets foreign takeovers of U.S. companies for national security concerns, initially approved the ports deal. But DP World said it would shed the U.S. assets after an outcry from Congress amid concerns about national security risks.
Amid the furor over the DP World contract, in early March, the Bush administration said it was launching a 45-day in-depth security review of the Doncasters acquisition.
Barrow said he had read media reports from Dubai that said the Doncasters purchase was expected to be approved by CFIUS as early as Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/security_congress_dubai_dc
I don't particularly believe an Arab nation owning/running a domestic entity will increase security risks and terrorism to the height of having to worry so much about it but the initial ports deal went down the toilet because of such worries. So why has this story not had the same effect? Or the idea of China running nuclear scanning tests?
Foreign companies are buying up big in the US and UK and there's interest here in little Western Australia for the mines. The US economy isn't the strongest, and although in this case a UK company with the defence contract is being bought, soon 'proper' US companies will be bought out.
Back in March, Indiana leased its toll road to a Spanish and Australian company which seems weird when a toll road is a good long term revenue raiser. Maybe the US and its states need the quick boost of cash that comes with selling off infrastructure and can't look to the future which will be disastrous if the trend continues. Even worse is a local company couldn't purchase the lease, it had to go overseas.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency panel led by the Treasury Department, is reviewing the $1.24 billion takeover of Doncasters, a British engineering group with U.S. holdings, by state-owned Dubai International Capital.
Doncasters has plants in nine U.S. locations making parts for defense contractors. The Dubai takeover has sparked security concerns from Rep. John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, who represents a district which has a plant that makes tank engines.
Barrow said the Treasury Department's reluctance to discuss the latest proposal with him suggested it had learned little from the congressional outcry over a now-abandoned deal that would have allowed another Dubai company to take over some U.S. port operations.
"If I can't find out from my own government what is going on, it ain't congressional oversight," Barrow said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
"We (lawmakers) can't find out things ... We have no reason to believe they (the administration) are doing anything other than sleepwalking through the review process," he said.
The Doncasters deal has strong parallels to the ports saga. Both deals involve state-owned Dubai companies purchasing British companies with U.S. assets. In the ports case, Dubai Ports World bought a British company that operated U.S. port terminals.
CFIUS, which vets foreign takeovers of U.S. companies for national security concerns, initially approved the ports deal. But DP World said it would shed the U.S. assets after an outcry from Congress amid concerns about national security risks.
Amid the furor over the DP World contract, in early March, the Bush administration said it was launching a 45-day in-depth security review of the Doncasters acquisition.
Barrow said he had read media reports from Dubai that said the Doncasters purchase was expected to be approved by CFIUS as early as Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/security_congress_dubai_dc
I don't particularly believe an Arab nation owning/running a domestic entity will increase security risks and terrorism to the height of having to worry so much about it but the initial ports deal went down the toilet because of such worries. So why has this story not had the same effect? Or the idea of China running nuclear scanning tests?
Foreign companies are buying up big in the US and UK and there's interest here in little Western Australia for the mines. The US economy isn't the strongest, and although in this case a UK company with the defence contract is being bought, soon 'proper' US companies will be bought out.
Back in March, Indiana leased its toll road to a Spanish and Australian company which seems weird when a toll road is a good long term revenue raiser. Maybe the US and its states need the quick boost of cash that comes with selling off infrastructure and can't look to the future which will be disastrous if the trend continues. Even worse is a local company couldn't purchase the lease, it had to go overseas.