Greenland chairman Zhang Yuliang has big plans for online finance
Greenland Group, China’s largest real estate developer by sales, is now teaming up with the country’s largest ecommerce group to raise money for its new projects on the Internet.
The Shanghai-based property company announced this week that it had sold out its first online debt offering within 30 minutes, successfully raising RMB 200 million ($32 million) by offering the wealth management product to investors via Alibaba’s Ant Financial service, as well as through Ping An’s wealth management sales platform.
Greenland has indicated that Internet finance will be one of the company’s primary areas of growth in the next five years, as China’s consumers remain hungry for high yield investment products.
Greenland Has Big Plans for Internet Finance
Greenland has turned to the Internet as domestic bank financing for property projects remains harder to obtain than in years past, and many international investors have been scared away from Chinese developer bonds by recent default scares such as the Shenzhen developer Kaisa Holdings.
Greenland announced the Internet finance initiative in February and in an announcement on the website of its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary said this week that it plans to expand its online financial services to other companies hoping to raise money on the Internet.
Online Finance Increasingly Popular in China
By funding its projects online, Greenland is riding a wave of consumer demand for better investment opportunities in China’s under-developed wealth management market.
Services such as Ant Financial’s Yu’e Bao, which offer higher yielding asset investments to individual online investors, have rapidly gained favor with Chinese consumers frustrated with the close to zero interest rates offered by bank savings accounts. As of last September, Yu’e Bao had RMB534.9 billion ($86.3 billion) in assets under management.
Greenland’s first Di Chan Bao product offers investors a 6.4 percent annual yield on a principal-protected note with a minimum subscription amount of RMB 20,000.
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