Mao Daqing’s URWork has rocketed to a $1 bil valuation
The global co-working craze continues to grab headlines here in Asia as a pair of deals this week push one of China’s top shared office players to a $1 billion valuation, and a Singaporean developer bets on its own mainland favorite. Also in the news, Tokyo’s office market may be set to slide and one of China’s biggest cross-border investors has a new Washington contact. Read on for all these stories and more.
Ant Financial Pushes URWork Valuation to $1B
UR Work, China’s equivalent of the world’s largest co-working space provider, US-based WeWork, has completed a series-B fundraising worth US$581 million (4 billion yuan), that valued the company at US$1.02 billion, making it the country’s first so-called “unicorn” (a start-up firm with worth more than a US$1 billion) in the domestic sector.
The Beijing-based brand attracting five investors including Tianhong Asset Management, the sole partner of online giant Alibaba in the sale of popular Yu’ebao money market funds , and Junfa Property, a Yunnan property firm. Read more>>
CDL Invests RMB 72M in Mainland Co-Working Operator
City Developments Limited (CDL) announced on Thursday that it has signed an agreement to invest 72 million yuan (S$14.8 million) for a 24 per cent stake in Distrii, an operator of co-working spaces in China.
This will be Distrii’s first international foray outside China. It will lease more than 60,000 square feet of space at CDL-owned Republic Plaza Tower 1 in Singapore’s Central Business District. Read more>>
Surge of New Space Seen Bringing Down Tokyo Office Market
Commercial property prices in Tokyo, a bellwether for Japan’s market, look to have peaked as the capital faces a glut of new offices even as the number of office workers is set to decline.
The property market had rebounded in the past three years as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies, with ultra-low interest rates, drew in investors attracted by the wider gap than in other developed markets between returns on property and borrowing costs. Read more>>
$200M Deal Could Buy DC Hotline for China’s HNA
HNA Group, a Chinese aviation and shipping conglomerate, is hoping to buy a bridge directly to the White House with its latest deal. HNA is taking a stake in SkyBridge Capital, the hedge fund of the newly minted presidential adviser Anthony Scaramucci. The business fit is a stretch, but the rationale of HNA making a friend on Donald J. Trump’s team as it tries to expand in the United States is hard to avoid.
Neither SkyBridge nor HNA nor RON Transatlantic, its partner in taking a majority stake, has revealed the terms of the deal. HNA probably paid less than $200 million, making it little more than an amuse-bouche for the deal-hungry company. It gobbled up more than $17 billion in overseas assets in 2016, including hotels, golf courses and the American cloud-computing company Ingram Micro, according to Thomson Reuters data. Read more>>
Warburg Pincus Buys $120M Stake in Indian Theatre Chain
Warburg Pincus, a PE firm focussed on growth investments, has picked up around 14 per cent stake in multiplex chain PVR Ltd for Rs 820 crore ($120.46 million), the company said in a statement today. Through the transaction, Renuka Ramnath-led private equity firm Multiples Private Equity has part-exited its investment in the company by selling 9 per cent stake via its affiliates while promoters Ajay Bijli and Sanjeev Bijli have divested only a 5 per cent stake in PVR. Read more>>
Wanda Ponders Deeper Push into Healthcare
Billionaire Wang Jianlin’s property-to-entertainment conglomerate is weighing a push into private health care in China, tapping into a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar industry in the country.
The chairman of Dalian Wanda Group Co. is considering setting up a chain of hospitals, he told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait Wednesday during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Read more>>
Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter for headlines as they happen.
Leave a Reply