Cheung Kong Group Denies Li Ka-shing Pulling back from China and HK

September 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Cheung Kong Group Denies Li Ka-shing Pulling back from China

09-06 10:34 Caijing

Guo Ziwei, a Cheung Kong director, called the shift a cautious investment decision by “putting eggs in more than one basket.”

Board of director of Cheung Kong Group, the leading HK-based multi-national conglomerate, has denied its chairman Li Ka-shing is giving up on investments in China following reports of his groups selling Chinese assets while shopping in Europe. Li’s conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa, has put the supermarket chain ParknShop in HK up for sale while the Cheung Kong is selling an office building in Shanghai for at least 6 billion yuan, triggering speculations that the Asia’s richest man is withdrawing investments in China, both the mainland and HK.The two of Li’s groups are also reportedly selling a piece of commercial property in Guangzhou to GCREF Acquisitions 22 Limited for a total of over 3 billion yuan.

Guo Ziwei, a Cheung Kong director, called the shift a cautious investment decision by putting eggs in more than one basket.

“We look at opportunities both home and abroad,” Guo explained in an interview with the Beijing Morning Post, “it’s just that we think Europe has presented better investment opportunities at this moment.”

Guo, however, assured that the billionaire will not give up on China as the world’s second largest economy will continue to grow by at least 7 percent, but said Europe offers higher returns with less competition.

Property market in China’s biggest cities continues to heat up as developers compete for prime land, prompting prices to record highs.

HK-based Sun Hung Kai & Co Thursday won a bid for a central land project in Xu Jiahui in Shanghai, at prices equivalent to 37,264 yuan a square meter, making it the most expensive in the city’s land sales in history.

Another Cheung Kong board of director Zhao Guoxiong last month also dismissed rumors of the group retreating from China, saying businesses in mainland cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are doing fine.

He said the group maintains its 2013 target of 10billion revenue from mainland and is expected to launch 200 more residential property projects by the end of the year.

Li Ka-Shing said last month he will increase his telecommunications market share in Europe and seek acquisitions as slowing property sales in Hong Kong depress profits at Cheung Kong Holdings, HK’s second-largest developer.

The company reported a 13 percent decline in first-half profit.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment