HNA Group Co., Ltd

HNA Group, the Chinese giant once famous for its dramatic global shopping spree, has asked the Chinese government to help bail it out as it struggles with a slowdown from the coronavirus outbreak. The company, which owns Hainan Airlines and several air-travel-related assets, said it could not deal with a cash crunch on its own after flight cancelations across China and overseas. It was not immediately clear whether the move amounted to a formal nationalization of the company, which has wrestled with tens of billions of dollars of debt after scooping up companies around the world, from a Swiss logistics firm to stakes in Deutsche Bank and even Hilton Worldwide Hotels. HNA Group has its origins in the regional Hainan Airlines in 1990 but had grown to become an international conglomerate. HNA had been aggressively expanding via takeovers in the past three years, acquiring stakes in Swissport, Gategroup, Deutsche Bank and Hilton International in a buying spree that led U.S. lawmakers to call for a probe into the ownership of HNA. But amid swelling debt and increasing attention from regulatory bodies, HNA began to unload its investments, divesting $14 billion in assets this year and reducing its stake in Deutsche to 7.6%. Since our founding in 1993, HNA Group has evolved from a regional airline based on Hainan Island in southern China into a Fortune Global 500 global company with approximately $145 billion of assets, over $90 billion in annual revenues, and an international workforce of 410,000 employees globally. We are a global company with diversified business interests that align with its six core pillars: HNA Technology, HNA Tourism, HNA Capital, HNA Holding, HNA Innovation Finance and HNA Modern Logistics. The conglomerate pledged part of its stake in Postal Savings Bank of China to borrow money as concerns about its debt load have started to weigh on its finances. And it still does not have approval to buy a controlling stake in SkyBridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci’s investment firm.