Jewel owner is just 23

THE new owner of Jewel is a 23-year-old, Chinese-born Sydneysider, company documents reveal.

A company linked to investment company Yuhu Group has taken on the Australian assets of flailing Chinese property group Wanda for $1.13billion.

Wanda announced it will sell its share of the three-tower development at southern Surfers Paradise and a sister development in Sydney’s Circular Quay to AWH Investment Group Pty Ltd, an associate of property and investment group Yuhu.

CEO Nick Tobin, who’s been in the job less than a month, said the purchase would have “no impact” on the development of Jewel, and that it would still include a Wanda Vista Hotel.

“It should be fantastic,” he said. “These are iconic buildings and we’re very excited to have picked up these assets.”

Company records reveal AWH is wholly owned by a company called Cloudstone Capital which was created two weeks ago and has a single shareholder – 23-year-old Huang Jiquan, an Australian citizen born in Guangzhou.

Mr Huang’s father, Huang Xiangmo, is founder of Yuhu Group, which was linked to a donations scandal that engulfed the Labor Party last month culminating in the resignation of Labor Senator Sam Dastyari.

In a statement after the close of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday night the company said it had formalised the sale of its share, which is around 60 per cent, for $315,044,422 cash and that the new owner would take on $815,107,691 of the development’s debt, which is payable by November this year.

The company will call a meeting for shareholders to vote on the sale, with parent company Wanda Commercial Properties pledging to “irrevocably undertake to the company to vote in favour of the master agreement”.

Wanda Commercial Properties also announced it had sold 14 per cent of its holdings to a partnership of digital commerce giant Tencent Holdings and other Chinese companies Suning Commerce Group, JD.com and Sunac China Holdings. The sale is worth $A6.6 billion.

The announcements came as the Wanda group reported a staggering 10.8 per cent decline in revenue, the second decline in two years, as it retreated from its ambitious expansion into entertainment and overseas property.