Soho China Soars 21% As $4.3 Bln Blackstone Purchase Signals Confidence In Country’s Real…

Shares in Soho China, one of China’s largest and best-known commercial real estate developers, soared by 21% at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday after funds associated with Blackstone Group offered to acquire the company in a transaction worth $3 billion.  

 The deal comes as China’s economy is continuing to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, and signals Blackstock’s confidence in the country’s longer-term prospects, even amid a period of geopolitical tension with the United States. and Europe. Blackstone is offering HK$5 a share, according to a Wednesday filing, compared with today’s closing price of HK$4.60.

Founded in 1995 and controlled by billionaire couple Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, Soho owns 1.3 million square meters of real estate, largely in Shanghai and Beijing.   Distinctive projects with architect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016, helped to put the couple and Zhang on the global real estate map. 

The two, worth $4.3 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today, will continue to own 9% of the business after Blackstone’s investment.  The company has no plans to delist, the filing said.

Blackstone had $196 billion of real estate investments as of March 31.  The company is led by American billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the son of a dry-goods store owner whose philanthropy includes a school in Beijing, Schwarzman College.  New York-traded shares in Blackstone Group rose by 1.2% yesterday to close at $98.48.

In other recent China investments, Blackstone last November bought a 70% stake in an urban logistics park in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for $1.1 billion from R&F Group, expanding Blackstone’s China logistics portfolio by approximately one-third.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, is home to the second-largest number of billionaires after the United States.

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@rflannerychina