Country Garden rises to 353rd spot
KUALA LUMPUR: China-based real estate developer Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd has moved up to 353rd spot in this year’s Fortune Global 500 list.
Its chairman and founder Yang Guoqiang said the company had always emphasised quality and sound management.
“Our achievements today are the results of the work that every one of the 180,000 employees in China and abroad have put into the company’s operations,” he said.
Last year, Country Garden’s revenue jumped 46 per cent yearon-year to a record US$33.6 billion (RM136.57 billion).
It joined seven other Chinese giants that also saw big jumps, including China Energy Investment (up 175 spots), Alibaba (up 162 spots) and Tencent (up 147 spots).
China has 120 companies in the Forbes Global 500 list this year, behind the United States with 126 and ahead of Japan with 52.
Since its establishment in 1992, Country Garden has evolved from a little-known property company that started a residential project in Shunde District in Foshan, Guangdong province, into an international developer with more than 1,900 residential projects globally.
The group said some of its notable projects included Forest City in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor, and Ryde Park in Sydney.
In China, it has projects across more than 700 cities and towns.
Over the years, the group has shifted its focus from the development of residential properties in the suburbs of first and second-tier Chinese cities to the development of premium residences in third and fourth-tier Chinese cities.
It has also started to enter cityindustry integration and longterm apartment rentals.
Now in its second year, the strategy has yielded positive results with the rollout of more than 10 science-tech towns, which are homes to 1,700 firms, including 52 of the world’s leading 500 companies such as Cisco and Midea.