Aug 03,2000 - 13:19:57 HKT [Quote] [Datacards] [Chart] (1186)
The Hong Kong government said it agreed with Pacific Century CyberWorks (1186) that the Hong Kong Internet investment firm should pay HK$7.80 billion (US$1 billion) to develop part of the land occupied by its Cyberport project into residential apartments. The figure reflects an accommodation value of HK$20,780 per square meter, or about HK$1,900 per square foot.
A spokesman for the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau said the land value was fixed after a series of discussions in the past eight weeks. The Lands Department was also represented in those discussions.
"The figure of $7.80098 billion is the open market value of the land earmarked for the Residential Portion as at the date of the grant of the Development Right to the Developer on June 8 this year," he said. "The figure is the open market value as at the date of the grant of the Development Right on June 8 this year. The date of valuation remains to be June 8, irrespective of when the land value figure is agreed."
The spokesman stressed that no delay had been caused to the project.
PCCW is required to hand over the completed Cyberport in three phases by end 2001 or early 2002; end of 2002 and end of 2003. It is required to hand back the completed Cyberport portion to the government, while the units in the residential portion will be put on sale in the open market.
The land value for the residential portion, which is HK$7.80 billion, is considered the contribution made by the government on the Cyberport. PCCW's contribution will be the capital contribution it will make towards the project, before sales proceeds are made available.
After completion of the Cyberport and after making provision to meet the outstanding project costs and putting aside at least HK$200 million for a development fund for the Cyberport portion, the surplus proceeds from the sale of the residential portion will be shared between the government and PCCW in accordance with their respective contributions.
To date, a total of 155 companies, local and overseas, have registered in becoming tenants of the Cyberport, which provides an environment supported by latest communications technologies to allow companies to produce Internet-related software. Of these, 15 of them are multinational corporations which have signed letters of intent to become anchor tenants. They are Cisco, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hikari Tsushin, Hua Wei, IBM, Legend, Microsoft, Oracle, Pacific Convergence Corp., Portal, Silicon Graphics, Softbank, Sybase and Yahoo.
[Quamnet News]