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Top China developer Country Garden Holdings Co recently hit the news for the wrong reasons. According to reports, there were six fatal accidents at its building site in Anhui province recently, plus another death at a Shanghai construction site in June.
Bloomberg reported on Saturday that Country Garden’s shares fell 17% this week after the developer announced on July 27 it was temporarily halting all 2,200 projects in China for safety checks.
The same report said that Country Garden had earlier ordered its staff to “move faster in getting projects to market”.
Bloomberg said: “The human and financial cost of the emphasis on speed is now coming into focus, after deadly accidents at its building sites caused the stock to crash…
“the go-fast approach has now earned the developer a sharp rebuke from Shanghai authorities, scorn on social media and even admonitions from analysts.”
Country Garden is famous in Malaysia for building the mega Forest City development in Johor.
Forest City covers 14 sq km of land on four artificial islands in Johor and has a gross development value of RM444 billion.
Aside from Forest City, Country Garden has three other developments in Malaysia, namely Central Park and Danga Bay, which like Forest City are also in Johor, and Diamond City in Semenyih, Selangor.
A recent report also said Country Garden jumped to 353rd place this year from 467th place last year in the Fortune Global 500 rankings, underpinned by its 46% growth in gross revenue to RMB226.9 billion (RM135.79 billion) last year.
The developer had also leaped 130 places to the 143rd spot in the annual Forbes Global 2000 list.
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