Temasek EMEA to seek big deals, ditch smaller holdings

PARIS - Temasek Holdings will largely avoid making smaller deals in Europe as it looks to manage fewer positions in a challenging era for investing, according to its regional head Nagi Hamiyeh.

The Europe, Middle East and Africa arm of Singapore’s investment company will favour a “sweet spot” of transactions ranging from around €500 million (S$755 million) to €1 billion, Mr Hamiyeh said in an interview in Paris. 

Mr Hamiyeh was appointed to lead Temasek Global Investments, which managed $155 billion in assets as at March, around 36 per cent of the firm’s portfolio, and will start operations on April 1, 2026, as part of a broader reorganisation.

Temasek has already begun selling smaller assets that “take a lot of bandwidth”, said Mr Hamiyeh, adding that there may be a small number of exceptions in technology. “Anything where our cost is less than €200 million, we’re not interested in; over time we will sell.”

At the same time, he said deals worth several billions of dollars would “create a lot of headaches for us”.

Mr Hamiyeh, who will concurrently remain Temasek’s head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said it had already identified 22 small “long-tail” assets and sold eight of them since 2024.

Holdings that sit within his purview run the gamut from Indian hospital operator Manipal Health Enterprises to US investment giant BlackRock and China’s Tencent Holdings.

Temasek Global Investments is one of three new entities announced in August as part of the overhaul, as the firm attempts to streamline operations and improve results.

Temasek has regularly been noted as one of the 10 most active sovereign wealth funds in the world by consultancy firm Global SWF, though the firm does not classify itself as one.

The United States, Europe and India will be the unit’s three largest investment destinations.

In Europe, more than $10 billion has already been deployed of the planned $25 billion that Mr Hamiyeh in 2024 predicted would be invested in the region over five years.

“We’re still investing in China, but we’re not going to invest at the pace we used to invest before,” he said, referring to Global Direct Investments – a Temasek label that does not include its Singapore-based portfolio companies. “The US is the deepest market in terms of opportunities in terms of capital markets, then it’s Europe.”

He reiterated that working with family businesses in Europe was its top priority there. Despite the luxury downturn affecting high-end brands around the world, Hamiyeh remains keen on backing such firms – highlighting its recent deal to build a 10 per cent stake in Italian fashion house Zegna Group, valued at about $220 million. 

The Zegna deal announced in late July “took me one year of discussion with the patriarch of the family”, he said. 

On the public side, it has a wish list of 15 European companies across luxury, consumer, life sciences, energy, financial services and logistics. “There is a financial model built for all of these and every day we go back and check: Is it at a dislocated price that allows us to go in or not?”

Temasek is also keen to find new sporting properties to buy into, with Mr Hamiyeh naming CVC Capital Partners’ investment in Formula One as “a great deal” while highlighting that some investors “made killings” in cricket in India.

In July, it said that it was an investor in music royalties via Stockholm-based Pophouse, founded by Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus. 

Returns trail

Temasek’s net portfolio value grew to hit a record high in its latest fiscal year, but its 10-year total shareholder return of 5 per cent – a compounded and annualised measure that includes dividends – underperformed the MSCI World Index, which returned an annualised 10 per cent in the decade through March 2025.

Under the reorganisation, Mr Hamiyeh – who spent several years helping to drive consolidation and value generation between Temasek’s Singapore companies before moving to Paris – is set to become one of its key leaders.

Temasek chief executive Dilhan Pillay reportedly said part of the rationale for the restructure was to “test the next generation and prepare them to take leadership of the company”.

Mr Hamiyeh said the portfolio outside of Singapore would be more dynamic and should grow faster than investments in the city-state.

Its Paris office will increase from 15 staff today to around 20 in the coming months, with some moving from Temasek’s London office and other locations.

“The portfolio in Singapore being a very mature portfolio will grow technically less fast over a longer period of time than what we’re doing on this side,” Mr Hamiyeh said. 

Speaking about the firm’s plans for its Singapore-based portfolio holdings, he said: “Every now and then, we would revisit with the boards of the companies areas where does it make sense to be ‘bigger is better’ and then we streamline and we take the best of both companies.”

As part of the reorganisation, Temasek’s domestic portfolio companies will be largely placed in a unit named Temasek Singapore under the leadership of its chief financial officer Png Chin Yee. They made up about 41 per cent of the firm’s net portfolio value as of March. BLOOMBERG