BT : Financial woes ahead for property developers: report

Business Times - 03 Jun 2010

Financial woes ahead for property developers: report

(BEIJING) China's property developers will have financial difficulties in the future as the liability ratio of 13 of the country's top 50 listed developers had already exceeded 70 per cent, yesterday's Shanghai Securities News reported.

The government's recent property market tightening will continue to slow the market in the second half of the year, said the newspaper, citing a report released by China Real Estate Appraisal (CRA) on Tuesday.

The report indicated that centrally administered state-owned property developers had fared better than other enterprises amid the government tightening measures.

Stock prices of listed property developers had slumped well over 20 per cent since the government introduced macro control measures in April.

China Overseas Land and Investment Ltd, subsidiary of the centrally administered China State Construction Engineering Corporation, had maintained rapid growth and replaced China Vanke Co as the country's largest listed property developer by market value, said the CRA report.

Total assets of the top 50 listed property enterprises hit 1.78 trillion yuan (S$367.8 billion) at the end of 2009, up 38.8 per cent year on year, it said.

Total revenue of these companies rose 48.3 per cent year on year to stand at 406.04 billion yuan, while net profit topped 83.84 billion yuan, up 67.38 per cent\. \-- Xinhua

Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.