China’s Anbang Buys Strategic Hotels and Resorts for $6.5 Billion

China’s Anbang has agreed to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts from private equity giant Blackstone for $6.5 billion.

Strategic Hotels and Resorts owns 18 luxury hotels, 17 of which are located in the United States and one of which is in Germany.

Blackstone is selling Strategic Hotels & Resorts, which owns 16 properties, just three months after buying the company themselves.

The luxury hotels chain includes the Four Seasons resorts in Arizona and Wyoming.

The deal marks the biggest US property purchase by a mainland Chinese buyer.

Chinese companies have been buying overseas assets despite the slowing economy.

Mainland investors have been snapping up prime US properties and other overseas assets to diversify their holdings amid concerns about weakness in China’s economy.

Anbang bought New York’s famous Waldorf-Astoria from Blackstone for a record $1.95 billion in 2015.

The Beijing-based company also owns office buildings in New York and Canada and a South Korean insurance company.

It tried to buy Portuguese bank Novo Banco in 2015, but that fell through because of political objections over the sale of a systemically important European lender.

In 2015, Chinese outbound acquisitions hit a record $108 billion, according to data provider Dealogic.

However, that amount is on track to be overtaken, given that more than $84 billion in deals have already been made so far this year, including the $43 billion purchase of Swiss agri-firm Syngenta by ChemChina.