Thai billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont has told a Chinese business forum that the Feb. 1 acquisition of a stake in Chinas Ping An insurance group is just the beginning of his Charoen Pokphand Group's investments there.
The Chinese market is a "very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions," Dhanin told reporters at the Boao Forum for Asia in the southern Chinese province of Hainan. "I am very optimistic about China's growth," he said, adding that the company is open to investing in many sectors. CP Group is a major producer and exporter of frozen shrimp, poultry and ready meals. It is also the majority shareholder of the 7-Eleven retail chain in Thailand.
But Dhanin denied a claim by Swiss bank UBS that it had put up $5.5 billion of the $9.4 billion it took Charoen to acquire a 15.6% interest in Ping Ann from British bank HSBC. Funds to buy the shares came from the Group itself, he said, but he declined to elaborate. He did say, however, that the CP Group hopes to cooperate with Ping An in agricultural businesses in the future.
The shares in Ping An give the Group, which owns businesses ranging from agriculture and frozen food production to retail and telecommunications, a stake in China's second-largest insurer and an inroad to the financial-services market in the world's second-biggest economy. Dhanin, speaking on a panel at the Boao Forum, said ethnic Chinese businesspeople from outside the nation should change their investment models for China to one that puts more emphasis on mergers and acquisitions.
"We are interested in any sector with good growth potential," the 73-year-old told reporters. "Our business is diversified across many sectors, be it supermarkets or finance. We can invest in many areas." Dhanin, whose father and uncle left China's Guangdong province in 1921 to start a seed shop in Thailand, spent more than four decades building the family business into Thailand's biggest agricultural company and conglomerate. His net worth was estimated at $6.9 billion as of April 7, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
