Oddly enough, it is possible to lose a fortune of 12.2 billion dollars in just five years. An example of this is Pan Sutong, the founder of the Goldin Group who came to occupy the number six position in the Hong Kong wealth ranking, but who is now drowning in debt and looming dangerously into the financial abyss.
Pan built his empire in the 1990s with the founding of Matsunichi, an electronics company that made MP3 players and karaoke TV monitors. In the early 2000s, the tycoon acquired Emperor Technology Venture, which he later renamed Matsunichi Communication Holdings. His next move was to enter the real estate sector, taking advantage of the boom in the Chinese market. In 2008, the company was renamed Goldin Properties and added to its portfolio a financial services company, Fortuna International, since then known as Goldin Financial.
It is at that moment that the businessman decides to launch his most ambitious project to date: building Goldin Metropolitan, a mini-city located in Tianjin, southeast of Beijing. According to the Goldin Properties website, Sutong aspired to turn this city into a regional economic center and would have 33 mansions, 12 apartment buildings and a 117-story skyscraper, which would make it the tallest in the country. .
However, things did not turn out as the tycoon had planned. In 2015, he was forced to stop construction work on the skyscraper due to lack of funds. Goldin Properties claimed to have received an investment of $5.9 billion, but still needed another $10 billion to complete the project, Forbes publishes.
In 2017, Pan borrowed $1 billion from Citic to finance the privatization of his empire’s real estate arm, which he must have thought was being undervalued by the public market, according to financial services company Everbright. Said credit expired for the first time in 2019, but the employer has not yet returned it, he has only paid a part of the interest corresponding to the following year.
In the last 5 years, the financial arm of the conglomerate has lost more than 90% of its value. In 2020, creditors seized its headquarters, a 28-story building located in Kowloon Bay, due to a default on a debt of more than 1.3 billion dollars. For their part, the accounts published last year showed a drop of almost 40% in their income -to 47.2 million dollars-, current liabilities maturing in 12 months of more than 950 million dollars and cash of only 2.1 million dollars. In that time, Pan has also repeatedly mortgaged his mansion in Hong Kong’s exclusive Deep Water Bay neighborhood for at least $85.6 million.
Last June, Pan was forced to resign as the company’s president and CEO. Soon after, the Hong Kong High Court of Justice ordered him to declare bankruptcy. Despite everything, the tycoon is reluctant to sell the assets and land of Goldin Metropolitan to pay the creditors, as it would mean definitively giving up his personal project.
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