Storm warning for the parent company of Hainan Airlines : the chinese group in the shareholder of Deutsche Bank, and Hilton Hotels, just to repay its debts. To honor short-term maturities, AST would seek to sell in any emergency assets for $ 6 billion (5 billion euros), reported the Wall Street Journal in its edition of December 18. Advantage of aviation and tourism, the group installed in the south of China, is today more like an investment fund, present across sectors as varied as hotels, logistics, finance, the oil storage or cloud computing. Since 2015, HNA followed the overseas investments for a total of $ 40 billion, amassing a total debt of $ 100 billion of $ 178 billion in assets in total, according to the group. The point of drawing the ire of Beijing, which has called to order several chinese groups last June.
Friday 15 December, the chinese bank Citic expressed “its concern” in a statement, indicating that the conglomerate was faced with ” problems of temporary liquidity “, because it had to repay debts with several financial institutions at the same time. At the end of November, the credit-rating agency Standard & Poors has downgraded the note of AST from B + to B. For the subsidiaries of HNA, borrowing rates rose on the bond market, chinese these past few weeks, sometimes up to 9 %.
In response, several subsidiaries of HNA have canceled fund-raising to escape the rate prohibitive. Tianjin Airlines co. was the third in this case Tuesday 19 December. The company has renounced to raise one billion yuan for a period of 270 days. It puts an end to the ” fluctuations of the market “, but says that its financial position is perfectly sound. Same defence for the parent company, including the director of the board of directors…
