China’s Hengmao Takes Hit on Lucky Melbourne Deal and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

There’s good news and bad news in today’s real estate roundup, starting with a Chinese developer taking a loss on a Melbourne office that it bought for the supposedly lucky price of A$88,888,888. Some cities in northern Britain aren’t so fortunate either, after seeing vague development deals with obscure Chinese groups quietly fall apart. On the plus side, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund has joined investors riding to the rescue of a struggling Korean retail giant, and the maker of WeChat is helping eastern China’s Jiangsu province get smarter. Read on for more ups and downs in Asia’s property scene.

China’s Hengmao Offloads Melbourne Office at a Loss

A Chinese developer, who purchased the Melbourne offices of Computershare 18 months ago for the “lucky” sum of A$88,888,888 ($65 million), has sold the building at a loss in a rising property market.

LYZ Property Group, a subsidiary of Nanchang-based Hengmao Group, offloaded the office leased by the financial firm on Friday in a A$93.5 million deal with the ASX-listed company Abacus Property Group. Taking into account stamp duty paid at the time of purchase and other legal and transaction costs, LYZ made an estimated loss of around A$280,000 on the transaction. Read more>>

Chinese Investment in Northern Britain Falls Through

Four years ago, when George Osborne visited Beijing there was enormous optimism that investment from China would help to regenerate Britain’s northern cities. In some notable cases, that optimism has proved unfounded.

Wirral, on the River Mersey, for example, has finally admitted it will never see the £175 million promised for an international trade centre. The deal, first mooted at the Shanghai Expo in 2010 has been quietly laid to rest. Peel, the private property conglomerate, signed an agreement with Sam Wa Resources Holdings, an obscure Chinese group, to build the centre. There was then supposed to be a much larger, £4.5 billion redevelopment of disused docks over the water from Liverpool. Read more>>

Singapore’s GIC Said To Inject $93M into Korean Retailer E-Land

Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC has decided to inject 100 billion won (US$92.60 million) into the cash-strapped Korean retail giant E-Land Group, according to news reports on Feb. 2.

GIC is joining a 300 billion won fund led by Hong Kong-based global private equity firm Anchor Equity Partners that had earlier announced its plans to inject 200 billion won into E-Land. Read more>>

73% of 82 Chinese Developers To Report Profit Growth in 2017

Of the 82 Chinese listed real estate companies that have issued their annual earnings forecasts, more than 60 – 73 percent – will have achieved net profit growth, while the profits of 29 companies rose more than 100 percent. Only eight firms are braced for a loss, or fewer than 10 percent, statistics real estate agency Centaline issued yesterday show.

The jump in profits mainly favored small and medium-sized real estate developers, e.g. Guangdong-based Shirong Zhaoye Co. is forecast to reap a total net profit of RMB 895 million ($142.29 million) to RMB 941 million last year, up almost tenfold. Kingland Technology Co. is expected to bring in net profits of between RMB 280 million and RMB 330 million, an increase of over twentyfold. Read more>>

Jardine Units Team Up for $75M Indonesia Condo Project

Indonesia’s diversified conglomerate Astra International has joined forces with a Hong Kong-based multinational property group to develop Arumaya, a residential apartment complex worth Rp 1 trillion — around $74.5 million — in Jakarta after seeing signs of recovery in Indonesia’s property market.

Arumaya will be developed by Brahmayasa Bahtera, a joint venture between Astra and Hongkong Land — a property investment, management and development group. The Indonesian conglomerate controls 60 percent of the joint venture, and the rest is owned by Hongkong Land. Both firms are under British conglomerate Jardine Matheson. Read more>>

Tencent Partners with Jiangsu Province on 30 Smart City Projects

Chinese Internet titan Tencent Holdings Ltd. has struck a strategic cooperative agreement with the government of east-coastal Jiangsu province to jointly implement 30 projects in nine major sectors, including transport and healthcare, to integrate the real and digital economies and hasten construction of a smart province.

The two inked their contract yesterday in the provincial capital of Nanjing. Tencent will apply its cloud and Big Data technologies in local law enforcement, transport, financial supervision and urban management. The company will also promote its products within the province, including artificial intelligence-aided medial assistant Tencent Miying and WeChat Wallet-based Tencent ride code, state Xinhuanet reported. Read more>>

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