London price tags close to home for mainland buyers in Hong Kong

With a depressed domestic market, Chinese developers are increasingly taking their rivalries offshore, with lofty ambitions matched by sky-high prices. Take the £50 million (HK$608 million) being sought for a London penthouse. If the price tag is close to home for buyers on the Peak, then so too is the trip to the sales office in Wan Chai.

Investors back home are firmly in the sights of mainland developers such as Reignwood Group, which is launching its 41-residence Ten Trinity Square on the site of the former Port of London Authority building in the City of London. But those keen on the 9,068 square foot penthouse, with views of the Tower of London and the River Thames, will have to wait. In the meantime, they can get their cheque books ready for other units in the project, the cheapest of which start from £5 million.

Reignwood, which is holding its Hong Kong exhibition until Wednesday, aims to sell five to 10 of the Ten Trinity Square units in the city.

"In Hong Kong, the exhibition is not aimed at just drawing Hong Kong buyers, it will attract mainland buyers as well," said Ni Songhua, the president of Reignwood Investments UK, adding the five-bedroom bedroom penthouse would be offered later.

His boss Yan Bin, the chairman of Reignwood, has made a name for himself with some high-profile business moves, including the distributorship of the Red Bull energy drink in China. He also has made himself the mainland's eighth-richest person, with an estimated US$14.2 billion, according to this year's Hurun Rich List.

Yan, in staking a claim on London's high-end market, is competing head-on with fellow mainland tycoon Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, who was ousted from the top spot on the mainland's rich list by Alibaba's Jack Ma Yun.