Capital Estate to recover payment for idle Coloane plot

Capital Estate Ltd, a company chaired by local businessman Sio Tak Hong, is to receive back HK$298 million (US$37.3 million) from Sociedade de Investimento e Indústria Sun Fat Lda, according to its filing with Hong Kong Stock Exchange last week. Sun Fat was previously awarded a land plot in Coloane that the local government has announced it will repossess.
Capital Estate acquired a 99 per cent interest in Sun Fat for a total consideration of HK$320 million. The latter was awarded a land plot covering 10,154 square metres on Nossa Sra. de Ka Ho in Coloane in 1989 in order to build a steel-casting factory.
Following the declaration by the government to repossess the land, Sun Fat agreed to return the amount of HK$298 million that Capital Estate had paid for the acquisition of its stake, in three instalments. The Hong Kong-listed firm is to receive HK$60 million by the end of this year, and another HK$120 million and HK$118 million by the end of 2017 and 2018, respectively, the filing said.
In July, a dispatch by the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, announced that Sun Fat’s land concession over the land plot was invalid, as the company had not completed the development of the site before the expiry of its concession in March 2014.