Chinese Developers Seek New Way to Defy Slowing Market
June 28th , 2016
Facing a slowing down economic environment, a group of Chinese real estate developers started to seek new way to defy the slowdown, as some of them seeks to diversify away from pure traditional real estate development business, some may have found a quicker way.
In recent months, several sizeable Chinese developers announced to change corporate name and removed the word such as "property" or "real estate" from the corporate official name, seeking a new image amid the country's economic "new normals". The companies thought after this way may have found an image as multi-business holding company are much quicker way to defy slowing economy, paving ways for future development that may entail asset restructuring.
At the end of this month, during the listed company's annual general meeting, Evergrande Real Estate Group, controlled by one of China's fourth richest property millionaire, announced to change company name to China Evergrande Group. The company said it has in recent years significantly broadened its business scope to many new areas including healthcare, internet, tourism business in addition to real estate business, it felt a new name to reflect its new image and seeks to expand the company’s operational scale and profitability, and drive for sustainable rapid growth in the coming years throught the change of the name.
Same action on a different date, Guangzhou-based Agile Properties, did the same- proposed to shareholders to change company name to China Agile Group and the change was approved by shareholders on its annual general meeting.
But at the same time, in contrast, there are companies chose to add word property to the corporate name to strengthen its core business image. State-owned China Minmetals Construction proposed to alter company's English name to Minmetals Land. The company said through the adoption of a new Chinese name, it wishes to highlight the nature of its core business and reinforce its positioning as the sole listed real estate platform of China Minmetals Corporation. As the real estate segment of China Minmetals Corporation has long been developing properties under the brand, the new Chinese name will also enhance branding consistency, improve market competitiveness and strengthen brand awareness.
The article was originally published on 28 - 06 - 2016 (11:45AM GMT+800)
The article was last updated on 11- 07- 2016 (22:00PM GMT+800)
*However so, there are real estate developers on their ways to innovate the industry while at the same time profits on these innovations, we will run feature stories on this series in the coming months
