HNA Group Gets Help to Repay Dollar Bond and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

A backfiring conglomerate leads the way in Mingtiandi’s roundup of Asia real estate headlines today with the news that the debt-laden company that had golf courses seized four months ago is said to have received help to repay a $300 million bond.

In other news around the region, the owner of Club Med says the sun is shining on China as it posts a $70 million half-yearly profit, while a Hong Kong landlord tries to entice a designer clothes brand by offering to slash the rent of the Italian company’s flagship store by 44 percent.

Elsewhere, robots are being put to work in Singapore hotels, and a second home scheme draws an increasing number of applicants from protest-hit Hong Kong.

HNA Group Gets Help to Repay Dollar Bond

HNA Group repaid a dollar-denominated bond on Monday amid a report that the government in the company’s home province offered to help the debt-laden conglomerate meet payments to its offshore creditors.

HNA Group International, a unit of HNA Group, repaid a $300 million bond due 18 August, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg, saying “we remain committed to meeting our financial obligations.” REDD reported last week that the Hainan government would provide RMB 1 billion ($142 million) to HNA Group to help it repay that bond. Read more>>

Club Med Owner Fosun Tourism Posts H1 RMB 490M Profit

Club Med owner Fosun Tourism Group said on Monday that its net profit attributable to the company’s shareholders amounted to RMB 490 million ($69.5 million) for the first six months of this year, against a net loss of RMB 254.5 million for the same period last year, mainly down to rising profit from tourism operations.

The company said gross profit for the first half grew 67.7 percent to RMB 3 billion, while revenue grew 35.9 per cent to RMB 9 billion, even as a slowing global economy continued to weigh on the tourism industry. Read more>>

Hong Kong Landlord Offers 44% Rent Discount to Prada

The landlord of Prada’s retail store in Causeway Bay is offering to slash monthly rent by 44 percent next year when the Italian fashion house shuts its flagship outlet on Hong Kong Island, succumbing to dwindling shoppers’ foot traffic.

The Milanese company will close its 15,000-square foot (1,393 square metre) store at Plaza 2000 along Russell Street, for which Prada pays HK$9 million ($1.15 million) in monthly rent, according to its landlord Early Light Group. Read more>>

OYO Says It Has More Rooms than IHG

The Indian hospitality company Oyo has staked a claim as the third largest hotel chain in the world, saying it has now passed Intercontinental Hotels Group in terms of room count.

Oyo is without question a rapidly expanding hotel group, and its portfolio now includes 850,000 rooms spread across nearly 23,000 hotels in more than 800 cities. Read more>>

China Resources Land H1 Profit Up 44%

China Resources Land said its net profit rose 44 percent for the first half of the year due to higher revenues and revaluation gains from its investment properties such as shopping malls and office buildings.

Net profit for the January-to-June period came in at RMB 12.73 billion ($1.8 billion), compared with RMB 8.6 billion for the same period last year, the company said. Read more>>

Malaysia Second Home Scheme Draws 251 HK Applicants

A Malaysian program to attract wealthy foreigners to live in the Southeast Asian nation has drawn 251 applications from Hong Kong residents this year, compared with 193 approved last year from the Chinese-ruled city, a government official said.

Property consultants said interest in the “Malaysia My Second Home” (MM2H) initiative has surged among residents of the Asian financial hub, rattled by anti-Beijing protests that began more than 11 weeks ago. Read more>>

India REIT Investment to Surpass $10B

Investments raised through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are likely to cross $10 billion as more REITs offerings are likely to be announced by financial year 2020-2021, according to a joint report by KPMG and NAREDCO.

The report said that after the success of Embassy REIT launched earlier in the year, other major real estate players and private funds are also evaluating REITs listings, with underlying asset classes comprising varied real estate segments. Read more>>

SG Hotels Tap Robots to Ease Workload

Beating the rest of the service industry in Singapore, the accommodation and food service sector notched up productivity gains of two per cent last year.

And with looming cuts to the service sector’s foreign worker employment quotas, the hospitality industry may have to step up its technology adoption. Read more>>

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