We had fun in August with the venerable Balboa Bay Club & Resort and Newport Beach County Club reportedly being snatched up by Chinese investor Winston Chung.
Alas, it seems that deal is off.
And in what may be a recent first, it was not grubby Americans with patches over their trouser knees that caused the agreement to come through, but Chung and his Seven-One Capital Business Inc. failing to show International Bay Club Inc. the money.
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“Difficulty getting money out of China–a common refrain among potential
Chinese investors in U.S. properties and businesses these days–appears
to have been the downfall of the deal,” writes Mark Mueller in the Orange County Business Journal. “China's government has tightened up the amount of money that investors
can shift out of the country as it seeks to prevent capital outflows
amid concerns over its domestic economy and the stability of its
currency.”
It was Newport Beach-based International Bay Club Inc., which owns the tony oceanfront club and golf club, that sank the deal because, a source tells Mueller, “The Chinese Central Government had not allowed the movement of the necessary funds.”
Previous coverage:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.