Following Anbang Insurance’s successful US$1.95 billion acquisition of New York landmark the Waldorf Astoria marking the height of an unprecedented wave in US hotel asset investment by Chinese companies, another Chinese insurance company, Sunshine Insurance, announced on February 9 its acquisition of Baccarat Hotel New York for US$230 million.
Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) forecast that Chinese companies will invest an estimated US$5.1 billion in US hotel assets this year. This is three times the total investment of the previous four years and constitutes 7.5% of the US$68 billion total cross-border hotel investment projected for 2015.
Chinese companies invested US$160 million and US$130 million in hotel assets in 2011 and 2012 respectively and such investment has been going up since.
“We have never seen this level of activity in hotel properties from Chinese companies,” JLL Global Hotel Industry US managing director Gilda Perez-Alvarado said. “We now have an unprecedented amount of investment capital coming into US hotel properties from Chinese companies,” he said.(Translation by David)
