Suning, China’s biggest bricks and mortar retail group and the owner of Italian football club Inter Milan, plans to sell a $1.5bn stake in one of its subsidiaries in a bid to fortify its finances.
Shares in Suning.com were temporarily suspended in Shenzhen on Thursday as Suning said that Zhang Jindong, the billionaire founder of the business, was among a group of shareholders looking to offload up to a quarter of the online subsidiary to industrial investors.
Suning, which is part-owned by Alibaba and owns the Carrefour chain of supermarkets in China, is among a clutch of expansive Chinese conglomerates coming under intensifying market scrutiny over a wall of debt obligations due this year.