【英语财经】安邦65亿美元收购美国酒店资产 China’s Anbang agrees $6.5bn hotel deal with Blackstone

Chinese insurer Anbang has struck its biggest deal for prime US property, agreeing to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts for $6.5bn only three months after private equity group Blackstone took the luxury hotels collection private.

The acquisition is the latest sign of China’s unprecedented march on foreign assets at a time when the world’s second-largest economy grapples with turbulent economic conditions.

It also suggests that Anbang, which along with investment conglomerate Fosun International and real estate group Dalian Wanda have spearheaded many of China’s most ambitious deals, is undeterred in its acquisition spree in spite of a political backlash over some dealmaking attempts.

Strategic Hotels & Resorts owns 16 luxury US hotels including San Diego’s waterfront Hotel del Coronado and New York’s JW Marriott Essex House Hotel, which sits on the southern board of Central Park. Blackstone, which is also the largest shareholder in hotel group Hilton, closed a deal to acquire the company for $6bn in December.

The transaction may be announced as soon as Monday, according to a person close to the matter. Blackstone declined to comment and Anbang could not be reached for comment. In late 2014, Anbang bought New York’s Waldorf Astoria from Blackstone for nearly $2bn, or about $1.3m per room in the hotel.

Subsequently, Anbang continued its global buying spree, snapping up a majority stake in South Korea’s Tongyang Life for $1bn and a series of office buildings in Toronto and Vancouver for about $100m each.

Yet it has also faced some obstacles. A ￠3.5bn bid for Portuguese lender Novo Banco collapsed last year, after what would have been the first acquisition of a systemically important European bank by a Chinese group ran into political objections.

Anbang is one of China’s most politically connected companies. Wu Xiaohui, who founded the insurance group in 2004, is married to the granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, China’s former leader and architect of the country’s transition out of a planned economy.

Mr Wu, a former Chinese bureaucrat who is in his 40s, managed to set up Anbang when it was difficult to obtain a barrage of licences needed to establish an insurance company, a sector heavily dominated by government-controlled entities.

Over the past 12 years, Mr Wu, who started Anbang with about $60m, turned what was mainly a small car insurer into a financial services conglomerate, with assets worth more than Rmb800bn ($123bn) as of February last year.

Anbang has amassed large stakes in some of China’s largest banking institutions, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Merchants Bank, according to Chinese media reports. It also owns controlling stakes in six insurers, two asset management companies, a financial leasing group and a property developer in China.

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中国安邦保险(Anbang Insurance)已达成该公司最大一笔收购美国高端地产的协议，同意斥资65亿美元收购Strategic Hotels & Resorts，仅3个月前，美国私人股本集团黑石(Blackstone)将这些豪华酒店收归私有。

此次收购是在中国艰难应对动荡的经济环境之际，世界第二大经济体以空前规模向海外资产进军的最新标志。

此举还表明安邦——与投资企业集团复星国际(Fosun International)及地产集团大连万达(Dalian Wanda)一道带头敲定了中国许多最雄心勃勃的收购交易——并未在其收购热潮中退却，尽管该公司的某些交易尝试遭遇了政治阻力。

Strategic Hotels & Resorts在美国拥有16家豪华酒店，包括位于圣地亚哥海滨的科罗拉多大酒店(Hotel del Coronado)以及坐落于纽约中央公园南侧的艾塞克斯豪斯JW万豪酒店(JW Marriott Essex House Hotel)。去年12月，黑石——同时还是希尔顿(Hilton)酒店集团第一大股东——以60亿美元完成了对Strategic Hotels & Resorts的收购。

知情人士表示，该交易最早可能在周一宣布。黑石拒绝对此置评，记者联系不上安邦请其置评。2014年末，安邦斥资近20亿美元（平均每间客房约130万美元）从黑石手中收购了纽约华尔道夫酒店(Waldorf Astoria)。

收购华尔道夫酒店之后，安邦继续大举进行全球收购，以10亿美元价格获得韩国东洋人寿(Tongyang Life)多数股权，并在多伦多、温哥华以每笔1亿美元左右的价格拿下多栋写字楼。

然而，安邦的收购也遭遇过一些阻碍。去年，安邦以35亿欧元收购葡萄牙银行Novo Banco的竞标告败。如果交易成功，这将是中国企业首次收购欧洲一家具有系统重要性的银行，但该交易遭到了政治上的反对。

安邦是中国最具政治背景的公司之一。2004年，吴小晖创立了安邦保险集团，他的妻子是中国前领导人、改革开放总设计师邓小平的外孙女。

40多岁的吴小晖曾是一名公务员，在普通人很难获得建立一家保险公司所需要的大量执照的时候——中国保险业主要由政府控制的实体主导——成功创立了安邦保险。

过去12年间，吴小晖将以6000万美元起家的安邦保险从一家小型汽车保险公司打造成了一家金融服务企业集团，截至去年2月，公司资产价值超过8000亿元人民币（合1230亿美元）。

据中国媒体报道，安邦还在中国一些大型银行机构累计购买了大量股份，包括中国工商银行(ICBC)和招商银行(China Merchants Bank)。在中国，该公司还拥有6家保险公司、两家资产管理公司、一家金融租赁集团以及一家房地产开发公司的控股权。

译者/申凯