Iceland spurns huge land buy
November 28, 2011 Category Foreign investment, Weekly
Chinese entrepreneur Huang Nubo’s bid to create a vast nature retreat in Iceland was turned down by the country’s government amid concern the deal would have handed a major chunk of territory to a foreign investor. Iceland’s Interior Ministry said it had rejected an application by the Zhongkun Group in part because no foreign buyer had ever bought so much land in the country. Huang had sought to buy 30,639 hectares of land on the north coast of Iceland in a deal that would have been worth about HKD66 million. The site would have represented about 0.3% of the island’s land mass. Iceland’s Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir had previously said she would welcome Huang’s investment. But the Interior Ministry confirmed it had ruled that it could not lift the country’s strict restrictions on the purchase of land by foreigners to allow the deal to go ahead. Some critics of the proposed deal had raised concerns that allowing Huang to purchase the land could give China a strategic toehold in the Arctic Circle, where nations are scrambling to claim natural resources and melting ice caps are expected eventually to open up new, faster global shipping lanes.
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