Britain's career was frustrated and its eyes were set on Vietnam, but it lost more than a billion yuan due to the "Ponzi scheme" of its partner Zhang Meilan. In 2023, 96-year-old Li Ka-shing rarely returned to his hometown Chaoshan to celebrate his birthday. Li Ka-shing, who has been chasing profits all his life, finally discovered the "good" of the mainland again this time.
文 | 金融八卦女特约作者：无言
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Once upon a time, could you have thought that the hottest place in Hong Kong during the holiday turned out to be the sales office?
On April 6, Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Group and the Blue Coast real estate project jointly developed by the steel company opened for sale. On the same day, 28,000 groups of guests were interested in buying 422 houses, and an average of 66 people subscribed to a house, so it was a surprise "lottery" on the spot, and the listings were sold out in 12 hours, not to mention, and the winning rate was only 1.5%.
This achievement makes Li Ka-shing's Blue Coast the "ticket king" of the new property market in Hong Kong in 2024.
At a time when mainland real estate tycoons are in a predicament, Li Ka-shing has reaped the "second spring" of his career in Hong Kong?
What's going on?
1.
/ Li Ka-shing's sale of houses led to a wave of thousands of people rushing to buy houses,
"Selling at a loss" is behind the rich people in the mainland? /
In fact, it is not the first time that Li Ka-shing has sold a house at a discount.
Previously, whenever the property market was sluggish, the Li Ka-shing family would sell their properties at a discount to avoid small losses:
In 2008, Beijing villas were sold at a minimum discount of 5.7%;
In 2014 and 2015, when housing prices plummeted, the Li Ka-shing family discounted a number of new projects such as Hong Kong DIVA, Lohas Park, and Tsuen Wan, with discounts ranging from 75% to 85%.
In the past 2023, Cheung Kong Group launched its "Seaside Station II." project at a "depth charge price", which was also sold in the form of nearly 75% off at that time, and was 30% cheaper than the surrounding second-hand houses.
However, the difference is that the usable area of "Seaside Station II" is only 19.5 square meters to 66.8 square meters, and the unit price of a proper mainstream "snail house" in Hong Kong also ranges from 3.536 million Hong Kong dollars to 13.757 million Hong Kong dollars.
The Blue Coast launched this time focuses on 3-4 bedroom large apartments, and the usable area has also returned to the familiar 42-118 square meters.
You must know that in Hong Kong, where every inch of land is expensive, even if the lowest 42 square meters are calculated, Blue Coast will be sold for 9.14 million Hong Kong dollars (8.44 million yuan), and the main unit of 90 square meters will be sold for nearly 20 million Hong Kong dollars (18.47 million yuan).
Obviously, this batch of listings is not an ordinary "sell-off hedge". What's more, Blue Coast also has a special meaning - the first land acquisition project after Li Ka-shing's eldest son, Li Zeju, "second-generation succession".
In fact, this time it is more like a "hunt" by Li Ka-shing and his son for the rich in the mainland:
First of all, the timing of the Blue Coast's launch can be said to occupy the time - the Hong Kong government's property market is "spicy".
(Note: Since 2009, in order to crack down on short-term speculation and reduce external demand, Hong Kong has adopted special stamp duty measures for property sales, aiming to curb property prices, which is known as a "spicy move" by the market.) "Spicy", "spicy" and "spicy" refer to the tightening, relaxation and liberalization of Hong Kong's property market policies respectively. ）
As early as October 2023, as the Hong Kong property market entered the "freezing point", the Hong Kong government began to "reduce the spiciness", until February 28 this year, the Hong Kong SAR government fully revoked the "spicy moves" in the property market. Affected by this, the number of first-hand property transactions in Hong Kong rose by more than 14 times month-on-month to 4,200 in March, hitting a new monthly high since 1998.
With the withdrawal and recovery of Hong Kong's property market, the hottest news recently is:
Mainland tourists "form groups" in Hong Kong to grab houses.
After the full withdrawal, the treatment of mainland buyers is almost the same as that of Hong Kong locals, and under the extremely high rent-to-sale ratio in Hong Kong, wealthy mainland people who buy houses in Hong Kong can "rent and support loans" even if they buy them to collect rent.
Second, Hong Kong's two mainstream channels for attracting foreign talents, the Quality Migrant Scheme and the Talent Scheme, were approved by 70,000 people last year. And they are the targets of Li Ka-shing's father and son.
"This class of professionals and talents is the real elite, not the rich second generation who bring money, but a group of elites who want to grab it all over the world. They are now renting more buildings in the city and next to the subway, and Blue Coast just happens to be able to do it all. ”
As for their strength and needs, the senior management of Cheung Kong also mentioned it at the project kick-off meeting:
"The monthly salary of 50,000 yuan per month is definitely a medium and high level, and the other 30% is a monthly salary of more than 100,000 yuan. Now the population of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is about 80 million, and if there are 8,000 professionals, if they happen to subscribe to one of our projects, we will not have enough supply. ”
Even in order to "grab people", Cheung Kong also provides a series of free supporting services: for example, there will be a special reception after the purchase, staying in Hongkan and Ma'anshan, in addition to Cheung Kong also plans to provide legal advice including living and studying in Hong Kong, and renting arrangements before buying a house.
All in all, it is to let the "talented people" have no worries after buying a house.
At the same time, Cheung Kong Group also said that it would conduct offline roadshows in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and other first-tier cities in the mainland. The last time they held a roadshow for a Hong Kong project in the mainland was in 2017.
What is the effect of a set of "combination punches"? According to the first batch of sales data of Blue Coast, 30% of the buyers are from the mainland.
From this point of view, the "7% off" sale of houses is more like a gimmick to attract the attention of this group of wealthy people with a monthly salary of 10w+ in the mainland. As a confirmation, Cheung Kong Group has long said that the price of Blue Coast will be raised by 5%-10% in the future.
However, with the recovery of 7.5 billion Hong Kong dollars in one day, the ambitions of Li Ka-shing and his son's ambitions for the rich people in the mainland are not only in these 80 million "talents".
2.
/ Bidding for Evergrande Center, was reprimanded for taking advantage of the fire to rob,
Li Ka-shing and mainland real estate companies "grab food"? /
When mainland developers are in trouble, it has become a "hunting" moment for Li Ka-shing and his son.
In 2022, when China Evergrande sold the China Evergrande Center in Hong Kong, the 42% discount to the highest valuation attracted Cheung Kong Group to participate in the bidding, but the Evergrande Center was eventually taken over by the bondholders, and Li Ka-shing returned with a feather.
In mid-2023, Li Ka-shing personally parachuted into Guangzhou to compete for the "life-saving straw" of two mainland real estate companies, the sea-view luxury residential project in Hong Kong-Kaiyue.
It turned out that the Hong Kong luxury property Kaiyue project, which was valued at more than 30 billion yuan, was jointly auctioned for 16.8 billion Hong Kong dollars seven years ago, two domestic real estate developers, Logan Group and KWG.
At that time, it was mainland developers who occupied the best "luxury housing" position in Hong Kong, and Kaiyue can be said to have witnessed the rise of mainland developers.
However, it backfired, because of the poor sales and the recession of the domestic real estate industry in recent years, Logan Group and KWG Pacific have experienced thunderstorms and faced debt restructuring, and the high-quality asset Kaiyue has become the object of competition between the two mainland developers.
Previously, in order to build Kaiyue, Logan and KWG had borrowed up to HK$10.2 billion from Hong Kong syndicates such as HSBC. Now, in order to recover the funds, a syndicate of creditor banks led by HSBC intends to sell a majority interest in the loan, including Kaiyue, while Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong has offered to buy it.
This means that if the two mainland real estate companies are unable to repay their debts, and Cheung Kong, as a creditor, opposes the debt restructuring, it is very likely that Kaiyue will be taken away by the creditors or will be purchased at a low price in the auction process. Domestic projects that are waiting for funds to be "guaranteed to be delivered" will be greatly affected.
It is worth noting that Cheung Kong Group also participated in the land auction where the Kaiyue project is located in 2017 and failed. In other words, Li Ka-shing is trying to pick up a 30 billion mansion at a low price, and the meaning of "robbing while the fire is on" is self-evident.
"Don't measure me by empty morals, I'm just a businessman. Li Ka-shing has previously said this in the face of doubts.
As we all know, businessmen can't afford to make profits early, and Li Ka-shing, who has been running to invest in the UK, has unknowingly turned around.
3.
/ Running back to the mainland from the UK again?
Li Ka-shing's two sons have increased their weight in the mainland market one after another /
As early as 2019, Li Ka-shing's second-generation successor, the eldest son Li Zeju, had a tendency to rearrange the mainland.
ARA (Singapore Yateng Asset Management), a real estate fund management company under Cheung Kong Group, acquired Sanlin Impression City, a shopping mall in Pudong, Shanghai, for 2.4 billion.
In 2020, CKI announced the formation of a joint venture with Jidian Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of State Power, to deploy power energy.
In 2022, Hutchison Whampoa, which was taken over by Li Zeju, participated in a public land auction in the mainland for the first time in nearly a decade. At the moment when the land auction price in Guangzhou was opened, Hutchison Whampoa took the lead in bidding 2.36 billion yuan, but did not continue to participate in the auction. This move is also regarded as a "test plate" for the mainland market.
Sure enough, last year, Li Zeju "let go" and increased the layout of the mainland:
In just two months, Cheung Kong Infrastructure and Cheung Kong Group have successively acquired commercial and residential projects in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and other places, with a total investment of more than 10 billion.
In addition to the eldest son who inherited the family business, Li Ka-shing's second son, Li Zekai, has always been optimistic about the mainland business.
As early as 2010, Li Zekai's Yingke Development indirectly held 49% of the equity of the domestic Huatai Berry Fund through acquisition. When there were recent rumors of a sale, Li Zekai not only denied it, but also said that he would continue to invest in "insurance, technology and other sectors in the mainland".
As early as 2006, Li Zekai intended to enter the mainland insurance market through the acquisition of Life Life Insurance (now Fude Life), but did not receive the support of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission. However, Li Zekai did not give up on the mainland insurance market, and his FWD Insurance, which has repeatedly hit the market, made it clear in its prospectus that it "will continue to explore opportunities for expansion, especially in the Chinese mainland market." ”
In fact, Li Zekai himself once regretted selling 20% of Tencent's shares by mistake at a low price in the past.
The world is bustling, all for profit, and the world is bustling, all for profit.
Li Ka-shing, who sold off mainland assets and bought most of the UK, was finally "stabbed in the back":
In 2022, the sharp depreciation of the pound sterling caused Li Ka-shing's wealth to shrink by 80 billion out of thin air.
After surviving the epidemic, the business of British bars, which accounts for half of Cheung Kong's revenue, plummeted by only 4% due to soaring staff salaries; British Telecom, which accounts for one-third of Cheung Kong's revenue, was limited by the government, and Li Ka-shing put forward several proposals to raise prices, but they were all rejected. Later, the telcos were ready to merge with Vodafone to reduce losses, but they were dismissed on suspicion of monopoly......
The British career was frustrated, and Li Ka-shing set his sights on Vietnam, but because of the "Ponzi scheme" of his partner Zhang Meilan, not only could not make follow-up investment, but also lost more than a billion yuan.
So, in 2023, 96-year-old Li Ka-shing rarely returned to his hometown Chaoshan to celebrate his birthday.
Perhaps, Li Ka-shing, who "escaped" and chased profits all his life, finally discovered the "good" of the mainland this time.