Anbang Insurance Group of China is negotiating to buy the real-estate lending division of the failed Munich-based lender Hypo Real Estate, according to the Wall Street Journal.
State-owned Hypo Real Estate is trying to sell the division, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, known as PBB, via an initial public offering or an outright sale that could raise about €1.5bn ($1.7bn). PBB has assets of about €76bn.
As a result of the €10bn bail-out of Hypo Real Estate in mid-2008, the European Commission in 2011 decreed that PBB be privatised by the end of 2015, but Fitch Ratings in a report in January noted that a sale to a strategic buyer by end-2015 would be "challenging".
Anbang, based in Beijing, has total assets of 800bn yuan ($130bn), 3,000 outlets and over 20 million customers.
In the past eight months, the insurer has bought a 26-storey office building in New York City (IAR, 19 February, Anbang swoops for latest property deal), as well as the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel (IAR, 7 October 2014, Chinese insurer buys Waldorf Astoria New York) and a Sheraton hotel in Sydney (IAR, 21 November 2014, Chinese insurer buys Sydney hotel).
Over the same period, it has also bought a Dutch and a Belgian insurer and a Belgian bank.
