Suning Buys 37 Wanda Department Stores For Under Rmb 8b

Dalian Wanda has sold 37 department stores to Chinese retailer Suning.com for an amount estimated to be less than RMB 8 billion ($1.18 billion) as China’s largest commercial developer continues a two-year sell off of overseas and non-core assets after being singled out for its debt levels in China’s deleveraging campaign.

Suning’s purchase of the departments stores was first revealed by its chairman, Zhang Jindong, at the Shenzhen-listed company’s Chinese new year gathering on February 12, before being officially confirmed yesterday.

At the company event Zhang hailed the deal as “an important step in Suning’s full-scenery retail expansion for 2019 and a representative of its smart retail output capacity.” The acquisition is the latest in a series of deals by Suning, which has grown in recent years from a home appliance seller into one of China’s largest retailers, thanks to its network of more than 1,600 stores across 700 mainland China cities.

Suning said that the company had not initially declared the departement store acquisition to the Shenzhen stock exchange as the value did not surpass the legal reporting threshold, which with the appliance retailer’s 2017 net assets declared at RMB 78.96 billion, means that the department stores are worth less than 10 percent of that amount, or under RMB 7.9 billion.

Ref: Property Report