Vanke’s contracted sales hit US$3.61b

    CHINA Vanke Co., China’s largest residential property developer, said yesterday that it sold 22.09 billion yuan (US$3.61 billion) worth of property in October, covering a combined area of 1.91 million square metres.

    For the January-October period, the Shenzhen-based company’s sales totalled 171.14 billion yuan, up 17 percent from a year earlier. Vanke said Oct. 26. that its net profit rose 4.8 percent to 6.46 billion yuan for the first three quarters of the year. Squeezed by sliding home prices and expensive land costs, Vanke said its gross margin fell 1.1 percentage points to 23.8 percent from a year earlier in the September quarter.

    Huaneng unit starts operation

    HUANENG Power International Inc., the listed unit of a major Chinese State-owned electricity producer, said yesterday that the first set of generation units of its wholly owned Huaneng Chongqing Liangjiang Turbine Power Co. has recently started operation.

    To date, Huaneng Power’s total controlled power-generation capacity has increased to 67,861 megawatts from 67,394 megawatts, the Hong Kong and Shanghai-listed power firm said.

    PICC Property to sell new shares

    DOMESTIC insurer PICC Property & Casualty Co. said yesterday it plans to raise up to 7.25 billion yuan (US$1.19 billion) to strengthen its capital base.

    In a statement, the company said it plans to issue up to 379.8 million H shares and 844.6 million domestic shares on the basis of 0.9 rights shares for every 10 shares held. The price of the rights shares are HK$7.46 (US$0.99) and 5.92 yuan a share, respectively. The H-share price represents a discount of 47.4 percent from the stock’s closing price Nov. 4, it said. The sole global coordinator of the rights issue will be CICC, it added.

    Shares end down on profit-taking

    CHINA’S shares ended down yesterday due to profit-taking, but energy-related shares limited the losses after the power authority said work had started on an ultra-high voltage power project.

    The Shanghai Composite Index finished down 0.47 percent at 2,420.4 points. The CSI300 of the leading Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listings also fell 0.39 percent. While the Shenzhen Composite Index was 0.05 percent lower at 1,353.12.