The Hongcouver | Vancouver’s new property player has deep pockets - and a rich Chinese communist pedigree

Anbang Insurance, the privately owned Chinese firm that was last week reported to have made one of Vancouver’s most significant real estate purchases in years, boasts global ambitions and astonishingly deep pockets.

The mix and the nature of these connections has chopped and changed, but they have reportedly included over the years the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s granddaughter, who married Anbang chairman Wu Xiaohui; a son of the revered military commander Marshal Chen Yi; a son of former premier Zhu Rongzhi; and Long Yongtu himself, who spent 15 years engineering China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 as Beijing’s chief negotiator.

The Vancouver Sun and Financial Post last week reported that Anbang had bought a two-thirds stake in all four towers of downtown Vancouver’s Bentall Centre, held by Ivanhoe Cambridge, in a deal that valued the entire property at C$1 billion.

The Sun reported that Maple Tree Financial, a Vancouver-registered firm associated with Anbang, was making the Bentall purchase. Maple Tree Financial did not respond to the SCMP’s requests for comment.

Despite being overshadowed in the insurance business by mega firms like Ping An and China Life, Anbang has become famous in China for its huge foreign plays. In 2014, it bought New York’s storied Waldorf Astoria hotel for US$1.95 billion, a price some saw as greatly overvalued.