By HUANG Yu

Troubled real estate company R&F Group has sold a luxury hotel in Beijing, one of 73 Wanda Hotels it bought in 2017, for 550 million yuan (US$79 million), a 6.5 million yuan loss. 

R&F bought 73 hotels from Wanda Group in 2017 for 19 billion yuan. Since then R&F has lost more than 3 billion yuan in the hotel business, but still operates 93 hotels worldwide. The hotel business not only bogged R&F down financially, but hindered it from developing other businesses that might have turned a profit.

In July, R&F rolled over ten foreign bonds that add up to US$4.9 billion. According to its financial report, R&F now faces 126.2 billion yuan of debt, 59.4 percent of which are short-term. Only 2 billion yuan is currently available.

Its revenue in H1 this year dropped 55 percent year on year to 17.8 billion yuan with a net loss of 6.9 billion.