Real estate in southern China is seen as a good investment by those optimistic about the country’s… [+]
© 2019 Bloomberg Finance LP
One of China’s richest real estate entrepreneurs may be poised to become yet wealthier.
Times Neighborhood Holdings, a real estate management company controlled by Chinese billionaire Shum Chiu Hung and his wife Li Yiping, formally launched an IPO in Hong Kong today.
Times Neighborhood plans to sell 161.8 million shares at a price of up to HK$5.80 per share, raising as much as HK$938.4 million, or $121 million. The company is a spinoff from Hong Kong-listed Times China, Shum’s flagship business. Shum and Li are expected to hold 56% of Times Neighborhood after the completion of the spinoff.
Shum, 48, started his real estate career in 1999, when he founded Guangzhou Sweetland Real Estate Development. In 2001, he founded Guangzhou Times Holdings Group and has turned the business into one of China’s largest real estate developers. Times China went public in Hong Kong in 2013, and had total assets of $18 billion at the end of 2018.
Real estate was a major source of wealth for members of the 2019 Forbes China Rich List unveiled in November. (See list overview here.) Shum ranked No. 131 on the list with wealth of $2.45 billion. He shares his fortune with his wife, who doesn’t a position in Times China. The country’s richest real estate developer is Hui Ka Yan, chairman of the Evergrande Group.
China is home to the world’s second-largest group of billionaires after the United States.
Shum holds an EMBA from Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University.
–with Nathan Hu
–Follow me @rflannerychina