On the evening of November 25, Wanda Hotel Development announced that on November 24, US time, the company completed the sale of the Chicago property project. The company will no longer hold any equity in the target company, and the target company’s assets, liabilities and financial performance will no longer be integrated. Into the company’s consolidated financial statements. So far, Wanda Group has emptied all its overseas real estate projects.
The announcement shows that on November 24th, US time, the company completed the sale of the Chicago property project. Upon completion of the sale, the principal amount of the company loan was approximately US$281 million, and approximately US$349.9 million has been paid to the seller.
On October 16, Wanda Hotel Development announced that the company held an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders on the same day. At the meeting, the proposal on the sale of the interests of the Chicago property project was officially passed by voting. Specifically, regarding the above-mentioned sale vote, the total number of votes of Wanda Hotel shareholders is 3384121675, of which the affirmative votes are 3333998675, accounting for 98.52%; the negative vote is 50123000, accounting for 1.48%. As more than 50% of the votes were in favor of the above ordinary resolution, the resolution was officially passed.
On July 30, Wanda Hotel Development announced that its non-wholly-owned subsidiary Wanda Chicago Real Estate agreed to sell 90% of Parcel C LLC to Magellan Parcel C/D LLC for US$270 million. The target company has Vista Tower, a real estate project in Chicago, USA. The announcement also stated that the sale is expected to bring HK$94 million in revenue to the development of Wanda Hotels.
According to information released on the official website of Wanda Group, the group announced on July 8, 2014 that it would invest 900 million US dollars to build a 350-meter-high, 89-story five-star hotel and apartment project in Chicago, the United States. Chicago’s third tallest building has become a new landmark in Chicago. The official website information also shows that the Chicago Wanda Tower project is the third five-star hotel project invested by Wanda Group in the world after London, England and Madrid, Spain since 2013.
According to the disclosure of the project progress, the pre-sale of the high-end apartment part of the Chicago project started in September 2015. As of the end of December 2018, approximately 56% of the total saleable area had been pre-sold; planning approval was obtained in April 2016 and the delivery was completed , The construction project started in August 2016 and the development is planned to be completed in 2020.
I used to spend hundreds of billions to buy
“I have a dream, not only to expand the enterprise, but also to expand the Chinese hotel brand to the world.” “Wanda announced a ten-year development strategy plan in early 2012, hoping to become the world’s first-class Multinational corporations.” Soon after ascending to the throne of the richest man, the energetic Wang Jianlin once talked about his “dream of going abroad.”
Since 2012, the overseas “buy, buy and buy” model has been launched. Wanda has been involved in overseas real estate, cultural, entertainment, and sports investments, among which real estate has become its focus of expansion.
The “London ONE” (OneNine Elms) project is Wanda Group’s first overseas project. Wanda acquired it in 2013. The project is adjacent to Buckingham Palace and the London Eye. It has a 200-meter city tower and a 165-meter river view. Towers, which include residences, apartments and hotels.
In Australia, Wanda has two real estate projects. On August 11, 2014, Wanda Group announced the acquisition of the famous three-tower jewelry project in Gold Coast, Australia, with a planned investment of US$900 million. On January 23, 2015, Wanda Group announced the acquisition of 1 Alfred Building in Sydney, Australia and the adjacent Fairfax House Building. It plans to invest approximately US$1 billion to build a comprehensive landmark project.
In August 2014, Wanda won the bid for the 9900 Wilshere Avenue project in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and plans to invest 1.2 billion US dollars to build a comprehensive landmark project including luxury apartments and Wanda brand hotels.
In 2017, domestic supervision began to tighten foreign investment. In August of that year, the state issued the “Guiding Opinions on Further Guiding and Regulating the Direction of Overseas Investment” to restrict overseas investment in real estate, hotels, movie theaters, entertainment industries, and sports clubs. It is precisely the field that Wang Jianlin has focused on in recent years.
Subsequently, Wang Jianlin publicly stated his position to the outside world, actively responding to the call of the state, and decided to put the main investment in the country.
In 2018, Wang Jianlin sold three overseas projects in a row within one month (January): “Wanda London ONE” (Wanda One Nine Elms) in London, UK, cashed out a total of 59 million pounds (approximately 515 million yuan); and Two projects in Australia have cashed in a total of 315 million Australian dollars (about 1.488 billion yuan); rough calculations, Wang Jianlin “sold out” overseas real estate projects, and have cashed out nearly 4 billion yuan in total!
Wang Jianlin made it clear at the Wanda annual meeting on January 20, 2018 that Wanda would gradually settle all overseas interest-bearing liabilities. Wang Jianlin said: “Wanda has invested in a number of overseas projects in the past few years. Now we have decided to pay off overseas debts. We can pay off all our debts by selling half of our assets.”
In 2017, the Wang Jianlin family fell to No. 5 on the Hurun Report with a net worth of 155 billion yuan, and has since moved further and further away from the position of the richest man. In 2018, Wang Jianlin was worth 140 billion yuan, ranking 5th, and in 2019, he was worth 120 billion yuan, ranking 9th. According to the latest 2020 Hurun Global Rich List, Wang Jianlin’s net worth dropped another 1 billion yuan to 119 billion yuan.
On November 5, Forbes released the list of China’s richest people, and Wang Jianlin dropped from 14th last year to 30th.