Billionaire Wang Jianlin’s (王健林) Dalian Wanda Group Co (萬達集團) scrapped plans to buy a land plot in London for £470 million (US$603 million) amid the Chinese government’s intensifying scrutiny of overseas investments.
Wanda’s International Real Estate Center is no longer in pursuit of the 7.5 hectare Nine Elms Square land, the Chinese company said in a statement to Bloomberg yesterday.
On Monday, St Modwen Properties PLC said its venture with Vinci PLC sold the site, though it did not identify the buyer.
The move is the latest sign that Wang, who was one of China’s most prolific buyers of overseas assets until last year, is downsizing. Last month, the conglomerate agreed to sell most of its hotels and theme-park assets to Sunac China Holdings Ltd and Guangzhou R&F Properties Co for about US$9.5 billion.
Big Chinese dealmakers such as Wanda, Anbang Insurance Group Co, Fosun International Ltd (復星國際) and HNA Group Co (海航集團) have been under increasing scrutiny this year as the Chinese Communist Party steps up its clampdown of capital outflows to protect the yuan from weakening further.
Last week, the Chinese government formally laid down new rules on overseas investments, making explicit its campaign against what it calls “irrational” acquisitions of assets in industries ranging from real estate to hotels and entertainment.
Wanda still owns the £700 million One Nine Elms twin-tower complex being developed on the south bank of the River Thames. Wanda, which had been diversifying away from its property roots and into entertainment in recent years, has interests in hundreds of real-estate properties in 65 markets with an estimated property value of about US$40 billion, according to Real Capital Analytics.
Apart from selling assets, Wang is also overhauling his business empire. Hong Kong-listed Wanda Hotel Development Co (萬達酒店發展) said earlier this month that it would sell property assets to its real-estate affiliate, while shares of the group’s Wanda Film Holding Co (萬達電影) unit have been suspended from trading since early last month, pending a restructuring of the company.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained