Greentown’s Song: “Look Mom — I made the Fortune 500!”
Just last week, the world-renowned business magazine Fortune let us in on a secret — Greentown Group is the most successful real estate developer in China. For those of us covering China’s real estate market, this is nearly as big a surprise as it would be for FHM to do a centrefold of China’s most beautiful woman, Sister Feng, in their next issue.
As you may recall, Greentown Group has been fighting off bankruptcy throughout 2011 and into 2012, primarily by selling off assets, and most recently by selling off a potentially controlling stake in the company to the Hong Kong developer, Wharf.
It seems that by dumping all of these assets, Greentown has qualified to become one of 79 Chinese companies listed in Fortune’s Global 500 2012, and it is the only property developer from China to make the squad. Lucky for Greentown that the list only looks at revenues, and not balance sheets. It’s also a bit surprising that there is no distinction between sales revenue and asset sales, but nobody’s perfect.
According to Wikipedia, “The Fortune Global 500, also known as Global 500, is an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide as measured by revenue. The list is compiled and published annually by Fortune magazine.” Membership in the list is widely used as a token of prestige and business strength, with many prospective employees targetting Fortune 500 companies as the potential employers offering the best opportunities for growth.
In the case of Greentown, their major deals in the last year include selling off their stake in a project on Shanghai’s Bund to SOHO, selling their Greentown Plaza project in Shanghai’s Hongqiao area to SOHO, and selling 2.13 percent of their company to Wharf, with the option for Wharf to claim up to 35 percent of Greentown.
Wharf, the company which essentially just bought Greentown did not reach the Global 500 list, however, they do appear on Forbe’s Global 2000 list — ranked at #891.
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