For more than a decade, Chinese political and corporate leaders have been scouring the globe with seemingly bottomless wallets in hand. From Asia to Africa, the U.S. and Latin America, the results are hard to ignore as China has asserted itself as an emerging world power. Less well known is China’s diffuse but expanding footprint in Europe.
Bloomberg has crunched the numbers to compile the most comprehensive audit to date of China’s presence in Europe. It shows that China has bought or invested in assets amounting to at least $318 billion over the past 10 years. The continent saw roughly 45 percent more China-related activity than the U.S. during this period, in dollar terms, according to available data.
The volume and nature of some of these investments, from critical infrastructure in eastern and southern Europe to high-tech companies in the west, have raised a red flag at the European Union level.
We analyzed data for 678 completed or pending deals in 30 countries since 2008 for which financial terms were released, and found that Chinese state-backed and private companies have been involved in deals worth at least $255 billion across the European continent. Approximately 360 companies have been taken over, from Italian tire maker Pirelli & C. SpA to Irish aircraft leasing company Avolon Holdings Ltd., while Chinese entities also partially or wholly own at least four airports, six seaports, wind farms in at least nine countries and 13 professional soccer teams.
Importantly, the available figures underestimate the true size and scope of China’s ambitions in Europe. They notably exclude 355 mergers, investments and joint ventures—the primary types of deals examined here—for which terms were not disclosed. Bloomberg estimates or reporting on a dozen of the higher-profile deals among this group suggest an additional total value of $13.3 billion. Also not included: greenfield developments or stock-market operations totaling at least $40 billion, as compiled by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and the European Council on Foreign Relations, plus a $9 billion stake in Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler AG by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. chairman Li Shufu reported by Bloomberg.
Nowhere is China’s buying spree more evident than in the British capital, where it has gobbled up around a dozen office towers in the City of London and Canary Wharf financial districts.
More than half of the known investment total is concentrated in Europe’s five largest economies: The Chinese have participated in deals worth $70 billion in the U.K. alone. But it is at the periphery where China has made some of its biggest infrastructure plays, such as purchasing Greece’s largest port, in Piraeus. There’s also an important core-periphery divide when it comes to Europe’s openness to Chinese investment. At the same time that Germany, France and Italy are pushing for an EU-wide investment screening mechanism, governments in Greece, Portugal and Cyprus are skeptical of such a move, saying it would hamper their countries’ ability to attract much-needed capital.
Whether it’s buying up London commercial real estate, German technology companies such as industrial robot maker Kuka AG, Scandinavian carmakers like Volvo Personvagnar AB, or such energy producers as Switzerland’s Addax Petroleum Corp., Chinese investments have clustered in a few key industries.
Looking ahead, Chinese companies have expressed interest in a slew of European deals that haven’t been officially announced yet, based on Bloomberg data and reporting, as well as a recent ECFR report. These include building nuclear reactors in Romania and Bulgaria, buying a Croatian container terminal and building a Swedish port, taking over Czech carmaker Skoda Transportation AS and an Ireland-based oil and gas producer, investing in French ski-lift firm Compagnie des Alpes and a German electricity grid operator and providing financing for a bridge in Croatia and a Budapest-Belgrade rail link.
Source: Bloomberg
