China Everbright Limited and Focus Media Join Forces to Set Up a RMB5 Billion "New Industry Investment Fund"

Aug 30, 2016 22:14 JST

Source: China Everbright Ltd

HONG KONG, Aug 30, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - China Everbright Limited ("CEL", stock code: 165.HK) announced today, in partnership with Focus Media Information Technology Co Ltd ("Focus Media", stock code: 002027.SZ), to kick-off the establishment for a "New Industry Investment Fund" with a total committed capital of RMB5 billion, of which the initial fundraising scale is estimated to be RMB2 billion.

With a premier position in China's cross-border asset management industry, CEL has moved swiftly to position itself in the TMT sector this year. Led by its Super Project Acquisition Fund Department, CEL successfully established an M&A fund that focuses on major TMT projects in June 2016 with IDG Capital Partners. As China's most influential M&A fund, it represents a strong partnership between a cross-border asset management platform backed by a leading state-owned enterprise and a professional institutional investor with international renown. With a focus on high-growth, early-stage projects in emerging industries, the latest partnership with Focus Media, mainland China's largest listed media company, to set up this "New Industry Investment Fund" by bringing capital and industry expertise together marks yet another successful foray into TMT investment by CEL. The new fund is a major growth fund in the TMT sector.

The fund will capitalise on CEL's integrated strengths in investment, capital operations, industry consolidation and asset management, as well as Focus Media's industry resources and position as the mainland's biggest provider of digital lifestyle solutions. The fund focuses on quality growth-stage projects in such sub-sectors as general entertainment, consumption upgrading, vertical e-commerce, and internet finance. By contributing its industry-leading resources in terms of customers and partners to the upstream and downstream marketing chain and ecosystem, Focus Media will also draw on CEL's wealth of experience and resources in M&A consolidation and equity investment, in the hope of creating a unique "Industry + Capital" New Industry Investment Fund to generate substantial returns for both parties and investors.

Chen Shuang, CEL's Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We will take advantage of the industry investment opportunities brought about by China's industry restructuring, consumption upgrading and 'Internet +' strategy to step up our investment planning efforts in new industry sector of strategic importance. As China's largest digital lifestyle solutions provider, Focus Media's wide-ranging digital lifestyle offerings cover top enterprises in China's emerging industries. By bringing together experts and resources of both companies, this strategic partnership aims to create a new emerging industries fund focusing on the TMT sector. It also marks a milestone step forward, together, in a direction empowered by the growth concept of 'Industry + Capital'."

About China Everbright Limited
China Everbright Limited ("CEL", stock code: 165.HK) is the largest overseas financial platform of China Everbright Group Ltd. ("Everbright Group"). It is the second largest shareholder of Everbright Securities (stock code: 601788.SH, 6178.HK) and a strategic shareholder of China Everbright Bank (stock code: 601818.SH, 6818.HK), the controlling shareholder of the Hong Kong-listed China Aircraft Leasing Group Holdings Limited (stock code: 1848.HK) and the second largest shareholder of the Singapore-listed Ying Li International Real Estate Limited (stock code: 5DM. SGX). As at end-June 2016, CEL managed 33 funds with total fundraising amount of more than HK$67.8 billion. Everbright Group, the parent company of CEL, is a state-owned financial conglomerate with AUM of approximately RMB3,000 billion as at end-2015. For more information about CEL, please visit www.everbright165.com.

About Focus Media
Focus Media was founded in 2003 as the world's first elevator media company. In 2005, it became the first Chinese advertising media company to be listed on Nasdaq and was chosen as a constituent stock of the Nasdaq 100 Index in 2007. Focus Media returned to China's A-shares market in 2015, with a market capitalisation of over RMB100 billion, making it China's top media stock. As China's second largest media group, Focus Media's RMB10 billion revenue is built on using the elevator as a core venue. Elevators are part of an urban infrastructure and the most mundane of spaces. However, it represents mainstream crowds, captive traffic, high frequency, and low interference. These four features are the most fundamental and rarest resources for brand visibility to day. A city with 400 million people means a daily audience of 200 million. Covering 120 cities, with 1.1 million elevator posters, 180,000 elevator TV screens, and an average daily reach of 500 million mainstream urban pedestrians, Focus Media's elevator media is the media platform with the most explosive brand in China. For more information on Focus media, please visit: http://www.focusmedia.cn/.

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Source: China Everbright Ltd
Sectors: Daily Finance, Daily News