Disappointment descends on IPC, Raffles Education

SINGAPORE (Nov 27): The big splash that Oei Hong Leong made in the market two months ago lifted shares in IPC Corp and Raffles Education Corp sharply. But investors who attempted to ride the wave might now be underwater.

A one-time seller of PCs that later ventured into property development, IPC said on Sept 18 that it would sell a hotel in Zhuhai for RMB200 million ($40.98 million) in cash and acquire a 51% stake in a Chinese company involved in artificial intelligence (AI) for $5.1 million in new shares priced at 40 cents each. According to a statement from IPC at the time, both transactions were being done with units of New York-listed Xinyuan Real Estate Co. The largest shareholder of Xinyuan Real Estate is TPG Group Holdings, with a stake of just 8.49%.

So, what did this have to do with Oei? The famed asset trader, who happens to be a son of Eka Tjipta Widjaja, the founder of Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group, is the single-largest shareholder of IPC, with a 32.55% stake. And, only hours before IPC announced its transactions, Oei had unveiled plans of his own to invest US$5 billion ($6.8 billion) to build a network of data centres and other IT infrastructure in China, in what he called his “One Belt One Net” vision.

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