Trends Show Reversal of Chinese Investment in Western Hotels

The hotel industry is a global business, and investors from around the world have capital earmarked for investment into international companies or renowned portfolios of hotels.

Within the past decade, Chinese companies were among the biggest players seeking to invest in global hotel brands and real estate in the largest U.S. urban markets. In December 2016, Hotel News Now published an in-depth timeline of Chinese outbound capital in the hotel industry, which appeared to be moving quickly.

But since then, the direction of Chinese capital and hotel ownership has reversed.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and global geopolitical tensions have only made cross-border investments more uncertain. CNBC reported Friday that Chinese companies could be delisted on U.S. stock exchanges due to lack of financial transparency.

"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently named five U.S.-listed American depositary receipts of Chinese companies which they said failed to adhere to the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. ADRs represent shares of non-U.S. firms and are traded on U.S. exchanges," according to the CNBC report. "The China ADRs flagged by the SEC are the first to be identified as falling short of HFCAA standards. The act permits the SEC to ban companies from trading and even be delisted from U.S. exchanges if regulators stateside are unable to review company audits for three consecutive years."