Conglomerate Sukanto Tanoto Buys Luxury Hotels In Shanghai For IDR 3.72 Trillion

JAKARTA - Conglomerate Sukanto Tanoto through his property company, Pacific Eagle Real Estate has purchased a luxury hotel in Shanghai from Chinese developer Dalian Wanda Group. This is done in line with the expansion of investment in the property sector.

The transaction is not known how much. However, from the real estate site Mingtiadi reported that Pacific Eagle could pay as much as 1.7 billion yuan (240 million US dollars) equivalent to Rp3.72 trillion (Rp15,491 per US dollar) for Wanda Foreign on the Bund.

Tanoto also has a wealth of 3.15 billion US dollars equivalent to Rp48.8 trillion and is ranked 20th in the Forbes list of 50 richest people in Indonesia as of December 2023.

The Wanda Foreign on the Bund hotel is a luxury hotel with 193 rooms in the historic Bund seafront district in Shanghai. famous for its Western-style art deco building which was built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Opened in June 2016, Wanda reportedly spent 3.4 billion yuan building a seven-star hotel, making it the most expensive hotel to build in China.

As a long-term investor, Pacific Eagle Real Estate acquired Shanghai Wanda Reinign at the Bund hotel for capital conservation," a Pacific Eagle spokesperson said via email, cited from Forbes, Thursday, January 4.Wanda Reinign will be Pacific Eagle's second investment hotel after Mondrian Duxton Singapore with 304 rooms, which opened last July 2023.

Pacific Eagle, part of the Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) group owned by the Tanoto family, has made a breakthrough at the Singapore real estate market in recent years.

In 2022, the company bought the Tanglin Shopping Center in Singapore's Orchard Road shopping area for 868 million Singapore dollars (645 million US dollars) equivalent to Rp9.99 trillion. The plan to rebuild the property has not been completed.

In addition to property investment in Singapore, Pacific Eagle, in collaboration with China Resources Capital, also built a Pacific Eagle Center, a 21-story office building in Beijing.

The company is also developing Prospect Park, a business area consisting of 19 office blocks in the Chinese capital, and housing development in Rizhao City in China's southeastern Shandong province. Outside Asia, Pacific Eagle has commercial properties in London and Munich.

In addition to getting into the real estate sector, Tanoto has also ventured into the tissue manufacturing business. Last month, RGE offered to buy Vinda International Holdings, China's largest tissue maker, for 26 billion Hong Kong dollars (3.3 billion US dollars). This deal came after the acquisition of Brazil's OL Papeis by the RGE Bracel unit in January 2023.

The group invested $500 million to build tissue and pulp paper facilities in Brazil.

Tanoto, 74, founded RGE more than 50 years ago, when he opened a simple spare parts store known as the Motor Store in Medan, Indonesia. This business has grown into a global company with more than 60,000 employees and operations that include pulp and paper, palm oil, and energy.

His brace is one of the largest special cellulose manufacturers, which is used in everything from baby tissue to ice cream.