News Release

27th March 2000

Hutchison and Oracle Announce Joint Venture


27-Mar-2000

Global Transport eXchange to Link Global Buyers and Suppliers in First On-Line Exchange For US800 Billion Dollar Freight Transportation Industry

[HONG KONG, March 27, 2000] (http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?143463 or http://www.hph.com) Hutchison Port Holdings, the world’s largest private port investor, developer and operator, and Oracle Corporation, the largest provider of software for e-business, today announced the formation of the Global Transport eXchange (GTX), the first worldwide online exchange for the transportation services community. GTX will be a newly formed joint venture between Portsnportals.com, the e-commerce operations of Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH), and Oracle Corporation. HPH operates 18 ports in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, along with a number of transportation related service companies.

GTX, based on Oracle’s e-business marketplace platform, will enable buyers and sellers of logistics and transportation services to transact and share information via the Internet. GTX will cater to an open community of shippers, freight forwarders, manufacturers, logistics companies and other business-to-business exchanges providing an online marketplace for trading in trucking, air-freight, rail, shipping and warehouse capacity as well as integrated logistics.

GTX is expected to streamline and significantly eliminate inefficiencies from transportation supply chains in the US$800 billion freight transportation industry. It is anticipated that GTX’s supply chain capabilities will ultimately extend to other initiatives such as customs documentation, insurance, payment and track and trace.

HPH is currently in discussions with other key industry stakeholders whose potential involvement as equity partners in this exchange will alter the very nature of the transportation industry. GTX is expected to become operational in the third quarter of this calendar year.

“Global Transport eXchange will link buyers and sellers of transport capacity in a marketplace that is paperless, borderless and timeless,” said John Meredith, Group Managing Director of HPH. “Customers will be able to access the global GTX marketplace 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and they will be able to buy or sell transport capacity of any volume and any value at any time over the Internet. The cost efficiencies of paperless, real-time transactions provided by the GTX marketplace will be significant and add to the bottom line profitability of our customers.”

“HPH is the partner we wanted to have in this joint venture. HPH is one of the most progressive transportation groups in the industry and plays a neutral and unifying role in a very fragmented industry,” said Raymond Lane, president and COO, Oracle Corp. “The ability of all industry participants to respond to global market demands instantaneously over the Internet will radically change the old paradigm of doing business in the transportation sector.”

Hutchison Whampoa Group Managing Director and HPH Chairman Canning Fok commented that, “Oracle’s leading position as a provider of exchange software to the B-to-B marketplace made Oracle the ideal partner for HPH. Oracle was the only company with the resources and capabilities to handle the scale and scope of our requirements. This exchange will effectively integrate and streamline a highly fragmented transportation supply chain and will give global businesses tremendous competitive advantages.”