Henderson Land says it will rebut criticism of its sale of apartments in a luxury development at 39 Conduit Road and will provide lawmakers with seven letters to the government on the subject on Monday.
In a full-page advertisement containing 13 points which it plans to publish in six Chinese-language newspapers tomorrow, Henderson says the buyers of 24 units in the residential project paid deposits totalling about HK$360 million in 'genuine cash' and they were all recorded. Henderson says the sales, most of which have since collapsed, were 'simple commercial deals' which were 'legal, logical and reasonable', and it had been damaged and treated unjustly in relation to the incident.
The company's announcement comes as regulatory and law-enforcement agencies are looking into the cancelled sales that the developer said in October last year had fetched prices including a world-record HK$88,000 per square foot.
Settlement of the transactions was delayed by what Henderson said was a verbal agreement and on June 15, it said 20 of the deals had fallen through - among them the world-record HK$439 million sale of a top-floor duplex.
'The 24 transactions of the 39 Conduit Road project were just very simple commercial deals originally,' Henderson's announcement, provided to newspapers last night, says.
'Unfortunately they sparked speculation which brought negative impact and injustice to the company. Hence they affected mainland, overseas and local investors' confidence in investing in Hong Kong. Therefore, we are explaining the issue completely here.'
It says it had no business links, no financial relationships and no partnerships with the 24 buyers before the sales.