🚨 How BlackRock is tightening its grip on global trade routes

The firm has struck a $22.8 billion deal to acquire two key ports in the Panama Canal – and 43 others worldwide – from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings.

Here's how the company is quietly seizing control of global trade.

🔶 BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been "aggressively expanding" the firm’s infrastructure investment strategy in recent years

🔶 The company projects infrastructure to be one of the fastest-growing sectors, calling it a "$1 trillion market today"

🔶 Fink underlines the strategic importance of controlling infrastructure amid "structural shifts reshaping the global economy"


🗺 BlackRock's deals expose its global push

🔶 January 2024: BlackRock acquired Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) for $12.5 billion, gaining control over $150 billion in infrastructure assets, including airports, ports, digital infrastructure, water and waste management sectors

🔶 Key acquisitions include British Peel Ports – which handles more than 70 million tonnes of cargo annually – Melbourne port in Australia, as well as terminals across Europe, Asia and the Americas

🔶 The firm's March 2025 deal with CK Hutchison Holdings spans 23 countries, with 199 shipping berths in locations like Mexico, Argentina, the Netherlands, Egypt, Australia, Pakistan, the UK, Spain, Indonesia and South Korea

🔶 That includes all management resources, operations, IT systems and terminal operating systems controlling the ports, Hutchison announced

🔶 Not included in the deal are CK Hutchison’s ports in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, South China or any other Chinese ports

🔶 The acquisition coincides with US President Donald Trump raising concerns over China’s influence over the Panama Canal – but CK Hutchison insists the deal is "purely commercial in nature"

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🚀💥 SpaceX Starship launch caught attention of night sky viewers and the FAA

Elon Musk's SpaceX said it lost contact with the second stage of its giant Starship rocket shortly after its launch Thursday over the Gulf of Mexico on its eighth test flight.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights into several airports for "falling space debris".

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📹More than 65,000 thousand homes and businesses in south-east Queensland and northern NSW are without power as Tropical Cyclone Alfred looms just off the coast, Sky News Australia reported.

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🔥1,200 people evacuated as Japan fights forest fire

The fire has burned some 2,100 hectares (5,190 acres) of forest and damaged at least 84 homes, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

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