In mid February it was announced that Dubai Ports World, a firm owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, was acquiring ownership of several U.S. ports. Within a few days of that annoucement another deal was also revealed by the same UAE parent company.

Istithmar’s purcahse of 109 million shares of Time Warner gave it control of 2.39% of the world’s largest media conglomerate. They also hired one of Carl Icahn’s entities as its advisor. Icahn led an unsuccessful attempt to force the break up of Time Warner into 4 seperate units.

Am I being to suspicious in wondering whether these events were related? Although it doesn’t appear that any advantage was achieved, the potential is a bit creepy. If I were attempting to buy critical U.S. assets with natioanl security implications, I might find it convenient to control a significant chunk of U.S. media. And affiliating with a figure (Icahn) who could hold the firms feet to the fire wouldn’t seem like such a bad idea either.