One of China's four national asset management companies has signed a strategic cooperation with Fonterra's troubled partner Beingmate and is poised to become an investor via the company's controlling shareholder.
Beingmate announced the deal in a notice to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, while also saying that it plans to offload its 51 per cent stake in the Darnum milk powder plant in Australia, which it bought from Fonterra under a joint venture arrangement.
The news comes as Fonterra reviews its offshore assets, including its heavily impaired Beingmate stake. The co-operative has hired Goldman Sachs to review its shareholding in the Chinese infant formula company.
Great Wall was founded by the Chinese Government to help cushion the impact of the Asian financial crisis by taking bad loans off the books of China's largest banks.
Since 1999, it has acquired, managed and disposed of more than RMB 1 trillion of non-performing assets of financial institutions such as Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and other commercial banks, as well as non-financial institutions.