RE: Chinese tycoon Liu Zaiwang’s stake offers plot twist at Cineworld31 Aug 2020 03:20
Times has a paywall so will paste it here:
A secretive Chinese multimillionaire has become a leading shareholder in Cineworld, fuelling speculation about a possible take-private offer for Britain’s biggest cinema chain.
Liu Zaiwang, through his Jangho Group, has taken advantage of the company’s depressed share price to build a 5.1 per cent stake during August. According to a rich list compiled by Hurun, a Chinese research house, Mr Liu has a net worth of about $790 million.
Cineworld has lost two thirds of its market value this year, with the pandemic forcing the closure of its 787 sites around the world. Its reopening has been hampered by studios pushing back the release of their latest blockbusters amid fears that nobody would be able to watch them.
Despite the tumbling share price, Mr Liu’s stake is still worth about £43 million. Global City Holdings, the investment vehicle of the family of Mooky Greidinger, 67, Cineworld’s chief executive, remains the group’s largest backer, with 20.1 per cent of the shares.
There was speculation at the end of last year that the Greidingers may be tempted to take the business private, while a recent change in the law in the United States has freed the big film studios to buy up cinemas if they so desire.
he addition of Mr Liu, 48, to the share register has fanned the flames of speculation even higher. Retail investors have been speculating on social media and online trading forums about what his intentions might be. His interest in Cineworld has coincided with a change in fortunes for the stock, which has leapt by more than 60 per cent this month.
Mr Liu dropped out of university in the 1990s to set up his own business designing and building curtain walls — the glass and metal coverings on the outside of buildings. According to its website, Jangho won its first big contract in 1997 and then rode the Chinese construction boom that followed.
The group built curtain walls for some of the country’s most prominent skyscrapers and airport terminals, as well as some big casinos in Macau. The 2008 Olympic Games aided its growth, with several contract wins coming off the back of that event.
After building up Jangho and floating it on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Mr Liu then took something of a left turn and moved into healthcare, a venture unlikely to have gone unnoticed by Cineworld shareholders. Jangho bought a sizable stake in Vision Eye Institute, an Australian laser eye surgery provider, in the summer of 2015 before it bought out the whole business several weeks later for about $150 million. Mr Liu followed that by taking a 16 per cent stake in Healius, another Australian healthcare group. He lodged a $1.2 billion bid for the company last year but his proposal was knocked back.
Jangho’s investment in Cineworld is its first foray into a leisure industry that has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns imposed to combat it.
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