Wanda Sells Nine Elms Scheme as it Continues Global Sell-Off

Date: January 2018

Location: Nine Elms, London, UK

Name: Wanda (60% held by Wanda Hotel Development and remaining 40% held by Wanda Commercial Properties) bought the site on Nine Elms Lane in 2013, and had planned a hotel, residential, office and retail complex.

Price: £59m plus pay-off Wanda’s loan of £159.5m

Seller; Wanda – as above. In 2017 Wanda dropped plans to purchase a neighbouring property from St Modwen, Nine Elms Square, which was bought instead by R&F and CC Land Holdings.

In July 2017, R&F, one of China’s top 20 developers by contracted sales, agreed to pay about $3 billion for the 77 Wanda hotels in July, stepping in to ease financing for the conglomerate’s sale of the companies tourism and theme park projects to rival developer Sunac China Holdings Ltd.

Buyer: Not identified but believed to be fellow Chinese conglomerate Guangzhou R&F Properties, from Hong Kong.

THPT Comment: Will the hotel still get built? who was going to operate it? who will operate it? Sad that Wanda seems to be going the same way as HNA and others…see Bloomberg’s take on this.

Going back to the earlier deal (77 hotels for $3bn) Reuters report that deal was one of the quickest in history!

“Wang Jianlin (Chairman of Dalian Wanda Group) and I are long-time friends,” R&F Chairman Li Sze Lim said at an earnings conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday (August 2017). “We bumped into each other in an event in Beijing, and struck the deal after 20 to 30 minutes,” he said, referring to the hotel purchase in July.

Buying the hotels at a 40 percent discount showed Wang’s trust in R&F, he added.

If indeed it took less than 30 minutes to strike a $3 billion deal, the pair must certainly be well-acquainted. Sources have told Reuters Wanda approached R&F about taking on some of the assets from the initial deal with Sunac China (1918.HK) in order to speed up full payment.

First Seen: Property Week