04 Dec 2018
Chinese firm to acquire 25 per cent of Huis Ten Bosch
BY Luke Cloherty
Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun Group is to acquire almost a 25 per cent stake in Japanese theme park operator Huis Ten Bosch Co, following an investment of an undisclosed sum.
Fosun Group will assume 24.9 per cent of the operator as it looks to attract more Chinese visitors to its theme park, Hui Ten Bosch, in Nagasaki Prefecture.
Meanwhile, Japanese travel agency HIS will remain the operator’s majority shareholder with a 50.1 per cent stake, while the remaining 25 per cent is held by five companies based on the Japanese island of Kyushu.
In its fiscal year ended September 2018, traffic at Huis Ten Bosch was at 2.7 million visitors – down roughly 6 per cent from the previous year.
As such, Hideo Sawada, founder and chairman of HIS, said he feels that the park is "experiencing sluggish growth" and thus "needs a change".
The number of visitors to the theme park has been on the wane since the early 1990s, and Huis Ten Bosch Co's finances have suffered in part due to this, as well as to an unprofitable real estate business.
The company declared bankruptcy in 2003 but Japanese brokerage Nomura Group briefly resurrected it before the global financial crisis in 2008 again caused difficulties. Eventually, HIS took over in 2010 and has been slowly getting it back on its feet.
Last year, 7.4 million Chinese visitors arrived in Japan. This accounts for a quarter of the total visitors to the country and goes some way to explaining the move to attract more Chinese to the park by getting Fosun Group on-board.
Equally, Fosun Group has previous in investing in the Japanese attractions market, having acquired Hoshino Resort Tomoamu in central Hokkaido for ¥18.3bn (US$2.7bn, €2.3bn, £2.1bn) in 2015.
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