Alibaba is buying out InTime department stores across China
After pulling customers out of China’s department stores, ecommerce giant Alibaba has decided to put some cash into the downtrodden retail segment, according to reports in the media this week. Also in the headlines today, Goldman Sachs gets bullish on Chinese developers and Sunac buys a stake in an online real estate agency. Read on for all these stories and more.
Alibaba Buys Intime Dept Store Chain in $2.6B Deal
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it would team up with the founder of China’s Intime Retail (Group) Co. to take the department-store operator private, as the e-commerce giant seeks to extend its online dominance into physical stores.
China’s largest online retailer and Intime’s founder, Shen Guojun, will pay as much as 19.8 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$2.6 billion) to take the Hong Kong-listed department-store chain private, Alibaba said in a statement Tuesday. Alibaba already has a 28% stake in Intime from a US$692 million investment it made in 2014; its shareholding would rise to about 74% after the deal. Read more>>
Goldman Sachs Recommends Chinese Developer Stocks
Goldman Sachs has turned positive on China’s real estate developers even as the Chinese government has been tightening the housing bubble since early October.
“A policy-driven down cycle is not new to us,” boasted Goldman Sachs, however, the stock markets have overlooked two positive developments in the real estate market, analyst Yi Wang said. Read more>>
Sunac China Buys $375M Stake in Online Real Estate Agency
Chinese property developer Sunac China Holdings, through its Sunac Real Estate subsidiary, will purchase a 6.25 per cent stake of VC-backed O2O real estate services platform Homelink for RMB2.6 billion ($375.4 million) by way of capital increase, the company said in a January 9 announcement.
Upon closing the transaction, Homelink will become an associated company of Sunac China, which will be entitled to appoint one director for the invested firm. Read more>>
Shenzhen Plans Urban Renovation to Boost Home Supply
The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is getting more aggressive in launching urban redevelopment projects amid a severe shortage of residential land supply and surging home prices.
Such projects – which involve converting existing, often dilapidated, buildings into new homes – will become the most intense area of competition among companies eager to profit from the country’s most expensive property market, analysts say. Read more>>
Hong Kong Realtors Offer No Downpayment Schemes to Boost Sales
Hong Kong’s two largest property agencies, Midland Realty and Centaline Property Agency, are offering “zero down payment” schemes to existing home owners in a bid to drum up sales, a move that challenges the Hong Kong Monetary Authority tightening mortgage policy, which is intended to temper soaring property prices.
mReferral Mortgage Brokerage Services, a unit of Hong Kong-listed Midland Holdings, will lend up to 130 per cent of the value of a flat, up to a maximum of HK$20 million, through financial institutions from Tuesday. Read more>>
CapitaLand Mall Asia Picks Up Retail Management Deal in Xi’An
CapitaLand Mall Asia has signed its second management contract within five months, to manage the shopping mall in La Botanica, a township in Xi’an’s Chan-Ba Ecological District. The mall is being developed by (Xi’an) Property Development, a JV between CapitaLand and Hong Kong-based Henderson Land.
The deal follow CapitaLand’s announcement in August that it is managing the retail component of Fortune Finance Center in Changsha, China, for Changsha Pilot Investment Holdings. Read more>>
Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter for headlines as they happen.
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