UTour Travel Expanded with the Help of JD Capital
2014-09-16
UTour Travel (002707) and JD Capital signed a cooperative agreement to invest 30 million Euros to take over Club Med, a world-famous resort club listed on Euronext Paris under the symbol CU, with some investors and JD Moon River S.à.r.l., a company jointly set up by UTour Travel and JD Capital in Luxembourg.
Fosun and JD Moon River S.à.r.l. offered Club Med on September 12th and submitted tending offer documents to the AMF. Founded in 1950 in France, Club Med is world’s largest resort hotel group listed in the Paris Stock Exchange, with more than 80 resort villages in 30 countries, including 3 in Guilin, Yabuli and Dongao Island of Zhuhai of China. Club Med (the abbreviation of France Club Méditerranée), upholding the simple, joy and sunshine resort philosophy, is providing one-stop high-end resort services and advocating the living style of harmonious coexist between human being and the nature.
UTour Travel, one of China’s biggest outbound tourism operators, has taken the lead among Chinese market. In addition, it’s the main wholesaler of Club Med in China. The investment in Club Med would help the two companies develop their strengths, share Chinese outbound markets and operate successfully.
UTour Travel became the first listed private tourism agency in China in February. Tourism industry has a wide development space for M&A due to low concentration of tourism markets. After UTour Travel was listed, JD Capital was working on the search of a suitable investee for it. Besides contacting with Club Med, it’s helping UTour Travel conduct due diligence with Zhuyuan International Travel Agency (Zhuyuan). On September 13th, UTour Travel announced to buy parts of stocks of Zhuyuan and raise funds to achieve resource sharing and cooperation between them so as to enhance their competiveness among the listed companies.
Founded on November 3th, 1995, Zhuyuan has become China’s large 5A outbound tourism operator, ranking 12th among Top 100 Tourism Agencies in China in the Year of 2013 and 8th among Top 10 Taxpayers of Chinese Tourism Agencies in the Year of 2013.
JD Capital took 8.75% of UTour Travel’s shares in October 2010, becoming its second biggest shareholder. In February this year, it earned 12-fold book returns for its investor by 11 consecutive limit-up and a share price of over one hundred yuan.