Investors panic as Blackstone moves away from a Chinese property


In 2019, Soho China's president, Pan Shiyi, and CEO, his wife, Zhang Xin.
Credit…Visual China Group with Getty Images

Shares of Soho China, a real estate firm led by a leading power couple, fell by a third on Monday after Blackstone Group pulled out of the deal. buy the company.

Soho China said in a joint filing late Friday that it would not accept Blackstone’s $3 billion offer for a controlling stake in the company without giving a reason. Wall Street investment giants Blackstone and Soho China declined to comment further on Monday.

The company is controlled by Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi, a married couple who share the title of executive director. Mr. Pan, the chairman, was one of the first Chinese entrepreneurs to use social media for public relations and has tens of millions of online followers. Ms. Zhang is partially well known. for his role In 2013, he made an agreement to buy a stake in the General Motors Building in Manhattan.

News comes with the arrival of China’s most successful businessmen under scrutiny and increased pressure to share more of their riches. The deal, which will be among the largest in the real estate industry, was announced in June, pending regulatory review. It was seen by the husband and wife team as a move to reduce their exposure to China.

For Soho China, a deal could also strengthen confidence in the country’s real estate sector; this comes as Beijing is subject to further regulatory scrutiny after years of remarkable growth. Stop to corporate over-indebtedness. Developers had to start paying increased bills under new central bank rules called the “three red lines”.

EvergrandeChina’s largest developer has frightened investors, home buyers and experts, who predict a bankruptcy in the near future.

In the past weeks, Property prices and demand in some of China’s largest cities started to weaken. Last week, a prominent Beijing think tank said the industry was “showing signs of turning point”.

Real estate issues and reports of greater regulatory tightening in mainland China contributed to a nearly 2 percent drop in Hong Kong shares on Monday.

Students who went to ITT Technical Institutes, a troubled chain that closed its doors abruptly in 2016, are also among those whose loans were forgiven.
Credit… Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

More than 500,000 student borrowers with nearly $10 billion in student loan debt were wiped out this year. Stacy Cowley reports for The New York Times.

President Biden has so far fend off calls for some kind of sweeping debt cancellation. top priority for many progressive legislators, but a relatively modest parade of eligibility and assistance improvements contributes to a significant expansion of support for beleaguered borrowers. And more to come: The Department of Education said it plans regulatory changes to programs aimed at helping government officials and public servants. income-based repayment plans.

With 43 million borrowers holding $1.4 trillion in debt, there is plenty of incentive for the federal government, the primary lender for college borrowers, to soon fix their faltering aid programs. Since the pandemic began in March 2020, nearly all of these loans have been on an interest-free hold. Scheduled to expire on January 31. And every loan discharged is a shortfall for the agency to serve.

The department’s actions so far have generated little controversy—few oppose giving military personnel, disabled borrowers, and defrauded students the relief they legally deserve—but the idea of ​​canceling student debt more broadly is a lightning rod. Republicans don’t like the idea of ​​suffocating taxpayers with cost, and critics on the left see it as a subsidy for those with expensive professional degrees.

“Our overall goal is lasting change,” said Kelly Leon, spokesperson for the Education Department. “We are building a student loan system that works for borrowers and provides them with assistance that has long proven difficult by Congress.”

Advocates say widespread debt cancellation pressure has overshadowed calls to fix glaring administrative issues that need to be addressed urgently. READ THE ARTICLE →

Fannie Mae claims that by factoring in rent payments, it could make 17 percent of people more qualified for mortgages.
Credit…Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Fannie Mae, the federally funded agency that buys mortgages from banks, plans to scrutinize many people’s bank accounts with their permit to get a record of their regular rent payments to help assess mortgage adequacy.

Their data showed that only 17 percent of people who didn’t have a home in the previous three years and who would not have been eligible for a mortgage can now do so. But that 17 percent come from a disproportionately group of people of color, many of whom have limited credit histories and come from marginalized groups on the wrong side of a decades-old era. wealth gap.

Fannie Mae effectively sets most of the standards for who qualifies and what data matters, and so far, rent doesn’t count, even though it’s the largest payment most tenants make each month. For many years, consumer advocates and industry professionals have agreed that things shouldn’t be like that.

The roundabout, multi-step process that Fannie uses will mean that not many people will benefit from it at first. The New York Times Your Money columnist Ron Lieber takes a look →



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