China’s Anbang set to sell billions in assets abroad
China’s Anbang Insurance Group Co. Ltd. has reportedly decided to sell US$10 billion in international assets, starting next month, potentially including major properties in B.C.
The unwinding of international assets is tied to one of China’s biggest financial crime trials.
The Beijing-based company has appointed bankers to handle sales likely beginning in a month, according to Reuters. Reuters did not indicate whether B.C. properties will be among those sold.
The report cites “three people with knowledge of the matter ... who declined to be identified as they were not authorized to speak with media” saying the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, which Anbang bought in 2014 for US$1.95 billion, is not part of the sale.
That was the highest price paid for a single hotel in the U.S. and most paid by a Chinese buyer for a building there. This leaves a string of possible asset sales in North America with a few sprinkled in Europe and Asia, where Anbang has stakes in insurers in Belgium, the Netherlands and South Korea.
In B.C., Anbang owns prime office towers and retail space in downtown Vancouver at the Bentall Centre, which it bought in two controversial transactions for over $1 billion in 2016.
It also spent $1 billion-plus to purchase Vancouver-based Retirement Concepts, a seniors’ care company in 2017. These were made using Vancouver-based companies that Anbang wholly owns.
Anbang is also believed to own the Fairmont Vancouver Airport hotel and other Canadian hotels through a Hong Kong-based holding company called BlueSky Hotels and Resorts Inc.
Many of the international assets were amassed in a buying spree by Anbang’s then chairman Wu Xiaohui who was known for his flashy bidding style before he was sentenced by a Shanghai court in May to 18 years imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement of more than US$10 billion. He has been charged with using funds made off of mom-and-pop retail investors, who thought they were buying insurance products, to scoop up trophy assets.
Other Anbang assets include the Four Seasons Washington and JW Marriott Essex House Hotel in New York, which it has owned since it bought Strategic Hotels & Resorts for US$6.5 billion in 2016. It owns the Four Seasons Hotel Moscow. It owns one property in Toronto at 70 York Street, which it bought in 2015 for US$110 million.
Reuters quoted Anbang saying in an emailed statement it has “sufficient cash flow” and that it would not comment on market speculation.
“The review is a complex and comprehensive exercise. We currently do not have a specific asset optimization plan, nor a specific timetable.”
Anbang has been under the control of the Chinese government’s insurance regulator, which said it would oversee it for a year as it gets restructured.
In late May, Anbang appointed China International Corp Ltd (CICC) and UBS Group AG as advisers to oversee a process of selling assets with the idea that they would reach out to other banks and contacts in search of interested buyers.