Chinese millionaire pays Maritime Services $2.86 million for Bang & Olufsen, Point Piper harbour pool
Chinese millionaire Qiu Yafu, the Forbes Rich Lister who headed the Cubbie Station cotton acquisition, has bought the swimming pool lot of his Sydney waterfront property, known as the Bang & Olufsen house.
He bought the house for $33.5 million in July last year.
The recent 270 square metre swimming pool and lawn lot offering cost $2.86 million, after the conversion from leasehold to freehold by the Roads & Maritime Services (RMS), who previously held title. The boat shed remains on a recently negotiated 20-year RMS lease, according to documents obtained by Property Observer.
Qiu Yafu - who Property Observer gathers is known by the name Jerry - is the chairman of global textiles group Shandong Ruyi.
He ranked 356 on the Forbes 400 Richest Chinese in 2007, but with no mentions subsequent.
Qiu Yafu is an engineer from Shandong and a senior Communist Party member. He is a self-made man who first joined the textile company when it was previously a government managed woollen mill at the age of 17. He rose through the ranks to the head of the company at 39. He was a deputy of Tenth National People's Congress which held plenary sessions between 2003 and 2007.
He reportedly bought the Point Piper house on 1,358 square metres after spotting it during an Australia Day cruise with friends. The house got is nickname in similar circumstances. Singer Elton John nicknamed the house the Bang and Olufsen house due to its distinctive tinted glass stereo speaker design, spotting it while sailing Sydney Harbour.
Yafu headed the syndicate that purchased the 93,000 hectare Queensland Cubbie Station cotton property for $232 million in 2012. There was a subsequent purchase, a cotton ginnery in South Queensland.
Yafu was recently slotted to speak at the 89th Textile Institute World Conference in early November in Wuhan, China given his experience.
Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal reported the major textile production company backed out of a deal for control of a Pakistani company after banks in the Chinese company’s home balked at lending the $62 million needed to complete the acquisition.
As stress is mounting in China’s banking system, Masood Textile Mills Ltd.’s chief executive officer, Shahid Nazir, said Ruyi pulled out of the deal to buy 52% of his company, noting Shandong companies "were feeling the squeeze” as credit from China’s state-owned banking system was no longer readily available.
Ruyi is based in Jining, a coal town of 1.8 million people that sits by the Grand Canal, a waterway built more than a millennium ago to ship grain north to Beijing. The company started life as a collective, a type of state firm, but over time it took on new investors. It is now dominated by its chairman, Qiu Yafu, and his family, according to a person familiar with the Masood deal.
According to people familiar with the deal, Ruyi had received approval to invest in Masood from all the necessary Chinese regulators, well in advance of the deal falling apart.
In January, Ruyi signed the agreement to invest in Masood, which produces polo shirts and underwear and lists J.C. Penney, Adidas and Tommy Hilfiger among its customers, in the presence of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Yafu's Point Piper abode, which has been refurbished since its purchase from Channel 7 executive Bruce McWilliam, is registered in the name of his accountant, Christopher Walker.
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In red is the area swimming pool lot purchased from RMS. In yellow is the former extent of the freehold lot.
The RMS leasehold conversion is being offered to Sydney Harbour foreshore leaseholders on Point Piper.
Maritime administers more than 2,000 wetland leases covering foreshore structures in Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay, Newcastle Harbour and Port Kembla Harbour.
Sydney Harbour includes North Harbour, Middle Harbour, Parramatta River, Lane Cove River and Duck River. This body of wetland covers approximately 317 kilometres of harbour foreshore with an area of 5,255 hectares.
Leases cover structures ranging from private recreational facilities such as jetties and pontoons, to community facilities such as boat ramps and wharves, through to commercial and industrial business activities.
The website suggests RMS offers its lessees the options of 20-year unregistered or registered leases and three-year unregistered leases.
A 20-year unregistered lease does not require a plan of subdivision.
When a plan of subdivision is required the lessee must engage a registered surveyor to prepare a plan for lodgement with the Land and Property Management Authority which defines the site and is suitable for the issue of a new certificate of title in RMS’s name.
Deposited plan preparation, lodgement and registration requirements are outlined in RMS’s “Practice Statement for the Preparation of Subdivision Plans for Long-term Leases” available at RMS’s internet site.
If a lessee does not wish to enter a 20-year lease, RMS offers a three-year lease which does not require registration or subdivision. Generally a lessee may convert from a three-year lease to a 20-year lease at a later time if they choose.
Providing lease conditions are met, RMS normally issues new leases rather than holding over existing ones. Subject to a deed of assignment being entered into by the existing lessee prior to completion of the sale of the adjoining freehold property, leases are normally transferable upon the sale.