A company controlled by Australia’s richest Chinese-born citizen, billionaire Hui Wing Mau, is in due diligence to buy a Sydney office building that has potential for an apartment and hotel development worth up to $1 billion.
The move comes as the apartment boom drives up the prices of office towers in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that have the potential to be converted for residential use in the booming inner-city unit market.
The building being targeted, at 175 Liverpool Street in the CBD, is one of Sydney’s most sought after development sites and comes as more Asian-backed groups look to secure buildings.
It is thought that Mr Hui, who was this year ranked 6th on the BRW Rich List, ahead of Harry Triguboff and Andrew Forrest, is aiming to develop the tower through his Hong Kong-listed property development company Shimao Property Holdings.
The building’s owner, Singaporean investment giant GIC Real Estate, is expected to reap up to $400 million if the deal goes ahead. The parties and JLL and CBRE, the agents on the deal, declined to comment last night.
The 28-level tower has Hyde Park views and a net lettable area of about 46,320sq m.
GIC picked up the Liverpool Street office block for $125m in 1996 and has since built a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of office towers, shopping centres, hotels across Australia.
Mr Hui, 64, known formally as Xu Rongmao, is worth about $6.35bn and has held an Australian passport since 2004. It is believed he has dual Australian-Hong Kong nationality.
He was reportedly the oldest of eight children and grew up poor in the Fujian Province, on mainland China’s southeast coast. He emigrated to Hong Kong in the 1970s where he began work in a textile factory. During the 80s he accumulated a portfolio of factories and was China’s first owner of a three-star hotel after the government liberalised investment laws, according to BRW.
He founded Shimao Property in 2001, which listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2006.
Mr Hui reportedly undertook several property ventures in Australia during the 90s and later completed an MBA at the University of South Australia.
Mr Hui is rumoured to have made a $100,000 donation to the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party a decade ago.
Mr Hui will join a host of Chinese-born billionaires investing in Australian real estate development. China’s richest man Wang Jianlin has led the property arm of Dalian Wanda Group into the Gold Coast, with a half stake in the $1bn Jewell apartment and hotel complex. Country Garden, controlled by China’s richest woman, Yang Huiyan, is building an apartment complex in Sydney’s northern suburbs.
The largest player, state-owned Chinese developer Greenland Holding Group, has invested $1.4bn in Australian development projects in the past 18 months.