FOSUN Group, one of China’s most acquisitive conglomerates, is preparing to sell as much as 40 billion yuan (US$6 billion) in assets as it turns its focus towards raising its credit rating to above junk.

    As it steps back from the more than US$15 billion in overseas purchases made or announced since 2010, the group plans to disclose the disposals between now and the end of 2017, Liang Xinjun, chief executive officer of flagship unit Fosun International Ltd., said yesterday.

    “We will sell assets to repay debts,” Liang, 47, said in Shanghai. “We have ample capability to get investment grade ratings. So either strategically, or tactically, Fosun is crystal clear that this has become our strategy.”

    Fosun’s dwindling appetite for foreign trophies — it owns Club Med, Wall Street’s 28 Liberty building and Cirque du Soleil — makes it an outlier at a time when the likes of China National Chemical Corp. and Dalian Wanda Group Co. are pushing Chinese companies to their biggest-ever year of overseas acquisitions. Rather than joining the fray, Fosun is focusing on getting leaner before its next phase of growth.

    Liang is one of the three founders running the insurance-to-mining conglomerate — the other two being chairman Guo Guangchang and president Wang Qunbin. Guo, whose brief disappearance in December triggered a rout of Fosun shares, signaled the group will move away from centralized leadership.

    As to the disposals, Liang pointed to about 30 billion yuan to 40 billion yuan in assets such as properties, bonds and stock holdings that could be sold off. Fosun could part with more than that if it chose to because the company had 118 billion yuan in assets available for sale at the end of 2015, of which 102 billion yuan were parked in listed shares and bonds.

    (SD-Agencies)