In recent days, the news that Li Ka-shing sold the Dalian real estate project to Rongchuang for 4 billion has been very popular.

The project was bought by Cheung Kong in December 2011 for 1.9 billion yuan and cashed in at twice the price after eight years of "hoarding".

The media like to stare at Li Ka-shing's divestment, but ignore another piece of news that happened at the same time.

After nearly two months of preparation, the Li Ka-shing familyGreene King, the largest bar group and brewery in the UK(King Green)The acquisition has just officially dropped the hammer.

On October 9, 2019, Cheung Kong Group held a special shareholders' meeting on the acquisition of British brewery and British pub operator Greene King (King Green).

At the shareholders' meeting, Changshi explained to shareholders why it wanted to buy the British pub group:

Changshi has been studying the acquisition of Greene King since last year.I learned that the 2700 stores of Greene King have become self-owned properties.And the company's past financial position remained sound..

In the subsequent vote, Changshi shareholders formally passed the resolution with 2733654373 support (99.4%) and 16811724 opposition (0.6%).Approval for the acquisition of UK Greene King through wholly owned subsidiary CK Noble (UK) Limited.

According to the announcement of Cheung Kong, the company will useAll cashIn the form of acquisitions listed on the London Stock ExchangeGreene King(King Green)All issued share capital.

The purchase price is4.6 billion pounds(About 43 billion Hong Kong dollars, 39.3 billion RMB.

As a member of the FTSE 250 index, Greene King will delist from the London Stock Exchange and join Cheung Kong Industrial Group in the future.

The drunken man has nothing to do with drinking?

This announcement recently released by Changshi just proves the speculation in our previous article.

Read the sentence in the announcement again:

Began to study the acquisition of Greene King since last yearI learned that the 2700 stores of Greene King have become self-owned properties.And the company's past financial position remained sound..

It can be seen that on the surface, Li Ka-shing went to England to buy wine, but in fact he bought real estate.

The announcement said that Greene King itself owns more than 2000 real estate properties in the UK, which means that for the Li Ka-shing family, even if the bar can no longer be done, these properties can be leased to other companies and charge stable rents.

After looking at the data, British investors found that Greene King properties, including breweries, bars, restaurants, hotels, etc., cover an area of about 70 million square feet (about 7 million square meters), most of which are permanent or long-term lease rights.

Moreover, most of the Greene King bars are located in prime locations in major British cities, occupying an inch of land.

For example, the following picture represents some of the bars owned by Greene King in downtown London, which you can feel, basically concentrated in prime locations in the first district.

That's for sureOutside of pure real estateThe brand value of the bar giant Green King is actually not bad..

Greene King (King Green) was founded in 1799 and has a history of 220 years.

Greene King, founded by Benjamin Greene and headquartered in Berry St. Edmonds, Suffolk, is now the largest bar operator and winemaker in the UK, with 2700 bars, restaurants and hotels in the UK.

In addition to running bars, Greene King is also well-known for its brewing business, famous for its beer brands such as Abbot Ale, Old Speckled Hen and Greene King IPA.

It is worth mentioning that during the chairman's visit to the UK in October 2015, Cameron and Cameron were having fish and chips in an English mini-bar, and the beer Cameron ordered for the two was Greene King's Greene King IPA (Green King IPA).