China Minsheng Investment Co Ltd (CMI, 中國民生投資), the largest Chinese private investment fund, said on Saturday it would invest £1 billion (US$1.54 billion) in a Chinese-led project to develop a new financial district in London.
The project is one of the largest Chinese investments in Britain in recent years and one of the most significant for Minsheng, which launched last August with registered capital of 50 billion yuan (US$76.99 billion).
The private equity firm said it would become the majority investor in the project, which was unveiled in 2013 by Chinese developer Advanced Business Park (ABP) and London Mayor Boris Johnson.
ABP chairman Xu Weiping (徐衛平) wants to develop a 14-hectare sliver of land at the historic Royal Albert Dock in east London into 400,000m2 of offices and shops.
Headed by Dong Wenbiao (董文標), the former chairman of state-owned Minsheng Bank Corp (民生銀行), Minsheng Investment claims no formal relationship with the bank or the Chinese government despite the name.
In January, the fund’s international advisory committee, a panel that includes former European prime ministers, Asian tycoons and a Nobel Prize winner, assembled at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse for the first time to discuss its globalization strategy.
The fund has said it would invest broadly in areas ranging from sustainable energy to real estate to business jet services.
The Chinese developers and London officials have envisioned attracting growing Asian companies to establish their European headquarters at their business park, which is close to London City airport.
“After the project is completed, it will be the international platform and foundation for Chinese companies and capital to enter the European market,” Minsheng president Li Huaizhen (李懷珍) said at a news conference in Shanghai on Saturday, hours after striking a deal with the British Ministry of Finance.
As China’s economy cools, its firms are investing in overseas projects at such a pace that China’s outbound investment is soon set to overtake inbound flows.
China’s outbound direct investment surged 14.1 percent to a new high of US$102.9 billion last year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day