Temasek and GIC deny instigating Indonesian stock rout
Temasek and GIC denied a former Indonesian trade minister’s claim that they influenced MSCI to trigger Indonesia’s stock rout, calling the allegations baseless and untrue.
Accusations by the country’s ex-trade minister ‘have no basis and are patently untrue’
TEMASEK and GIC denied claims by a former Indonesian trade minister that Singapore’s two biggest state-owned investors helped instigate Indonesia’s recent stock market collapse.
MSCI last week said it expects to remove Indonesia from its global indices barring major improvements in market governance, sending local stocks tumbling by the most since the Asian financial crisis.
Former Indonesian trade minister Muhammad Lutfi said on social media that Temasek and GIC had a major influence over MSCI and were being used by Singapore to push the index provider on Indonesia.
“They’re pressuring MSCI to threaten to downgrade Indonesia to standalone market status, creating mass panic so that our stock index collapses,” he said in a video posted to Instagram. “Then they can buy back Indonesia’s best assets at discounted prices.”
Lutfi’s accusations “have no basis and are patently untrue”, said Fock Wai Hoong, Temasek Global Investments’ Asia-Pacific head excluding China and India. He was responding to questions at a tech industry briefing in Singapore.
“No one from Temasek, either the institution or the individuals working for the institution, (has) ever reached out to MSCI nor influenced any decisions they have ever made.”
A GIC spokesperson also denied the allegation and said that the sovereign wealth fund had invested in Indonesia for more than 30 years.
“The allegations about GIC and our staff are untrue,” GIC said in a statement. “Our investment decisions are not driven by index classifications or top-down views of a market and instead by company and asset-level fundamentals.”
MSCI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Indonesian officials are trying to prevent a downgrade, which MSCI is expected to decide on by Jun 30, 2027.
The Indonesia Stock Exchange said it will remove companies with highly concentrated ownership from the calculation of the benchmark index, following a meeting between exchange officials and MSCI representatives on Monday. BLOOMBERG
Source: The Business Times https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/asean/temasek-and-gic-deny-instigating-indonesian-stock-rout
