Genting chairman buys stake in yacht business

Genting Group’s chairman has bought out Genting Hong Kong’s shares in Grand Banks Yachts to provide required liquidity to the company, which has been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hong Kong.- The chairman of Genting group, Lim Kok Thay, has purchased a 24.68 per cent stake (US$7.9m) in Grand Banks Yachts, a Singapore-listed firm that manufactures and sells luxury yachts worldwide.

Lim Kok Thay has bought Genting Hong Kong’s stake in the yacht company to “enable the group to offload non-core assets and investment and provide required liquidity.” 

Genting group is facing financial problems as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought the cruise and tourism industry to a sudden halt in February 2020.

The company stated: “We continue our efforts to conserve cash and to seek additional sources of finance, including disposal of non-core assets and investments, to sustain our business working on partial resumption of cruise operations.”

Last year the company signed an agreement to sell a stake in its Macau hotel to increase liquidity and in August 2020, Genting Hong Kong decided to temporarily suspend all payments to financial creditors.

Genting Hong Kong has recently announced it expects to post a consolidated operating loss of US$600m and a consolidated net loss of no less than US$1.5bn for the year ending December 31 2020.