Hong Kong’s Far East Consortium Selling Half-Stake in Ritz-Carlton Perth for $66M

Far East Consortium has agreed to sell a 50 percent interest in the Ritz-Carlton Perth to an affiliate of fellow Hong Kong player AMTD Idea for A$100 million ($66.4 million).

FEC will sell half-stakes in the holding and operating companies of the 205-key hotel to Generation Essentials, an NYSE-listed hospitality and media arm of AMTD Idea, the investment division of financier Calvin Choi’s AMTD Group. The consideration is to be paid in six instalments through the end of 2027, according to a Monday stock filing.

“The directors are of the view that the transaction is consistent with the group’s strategy of unlocking development profits from its hotel portfolio, as well as divesting non-core assets,” said FEC, which swung to a HK$1.28 billion ($160 million) loss in the year to the end of March.

AMTD Idea, which counted FEC chairman David Chiu as one of its early backers and where third-generation FEC scion Andrew Chiu served as vice chairman in 2019 and 2020, more recently acquired the Hornsey Town Hall project in London from FEC earlier this year. AMTD Idea also operates a Dao by Dorsett AMTD hotel in Singapore through a joint venture with FEC.

Quick Cash

Opened in late 2019, the Ritz-Carlton Perth at 1 Barrack Street overlooks Western Australia’s Swan River. The luxury hotel forms part of FEC’s The Towers at Elizabeth Quay development, which also features 379 high-end apartments and 1,400 square metres (15,069 square feet) of ground-floor retail space.

FEC put the Ritz-Carlton Perth and the 257-key Ritz-Carlton Melbourne up for sale in July 2023 for a reported A$500 million (then $342 million) in total, with the Hong Kong developer telling Mingtiandi at the time that the exercise was consistent with the group’s stated capital-recycling strategy. 

The two assets went on the market less than a month after FEC and a pair of partners had sold a hotel on Queensland’s Gold Coast for A$192 million.

The sale price for the Ritz-Carlton Perth values the property at A$487,805 ($323,895) per key. FEC already received the first instalment payment of A$20 million, and the second payment of A$40 million is due by 29 December. The final four instalments of A$10 million each are deferred to 2026 and 2027.

Disposal Mode 

In March, FEC announced an agreement to sell its partly completed Hornsey Town Hall project in London’s Crouch End to AMTD Idea for £47.2 million (then $57.2 million). The hotel, arts and community centre project is nearing completion after FEC won a tender in 2017 for a long lease on the historic property.

The London sale was the latest in a string of UK asset sales by FEC and the Chiu family. In November of last year, a fund backed by David Chiu and several other Hong Kong tycoons agreed to sell a prime office building in London’s St James’s district to San Diego-based commercial property trust Realty Income for £125 million. In May 2024, FEC agreed to sell a pair of sites in a Manchester project for £17.24 million.

Six years ago, FEC and AMTD Group formed a JV to acquire a 268-room hotel and serviced residence in Singapore for S$289 million (then $215 million), later rebranding it as Dao by Dorsett AMTD Singapore.

AMTD Idea was co-founded in 2003 by tycoon Li Ka-shing, but Hong Kong’s richest man later distanced himself from the group amid meme-stock mania surrounding the company’s digital unit in 2022.

AMTD Digital saw its share price skyrocket more than 32,000 percent after its initial public offering in 2022, briefly making Calvin Choi Asia’s sixth-richest person, despite the firm having recorded just $25 million in annual revenue in 2021.