China Investment Corp. (CIC) may be close to purchasing a sizeable chunk of Island Timberlands which owns about 260,000 hectares of private forest lands on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that CIC “is close to purchasing a 12.5 per cent stake in some timber assets in Canada from an infrastructure affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. for about $100 million.
The move marks the latest effort by the Chinese sovereign wealth fund to step up its investment in assets that could help shield its giant overseas portfolio from rising inflation risks,” the business newspaper reported.
Island Timberlands’ parent company is Brookfield Asset Management (BAM). The giant Wall Street-based conglomerate says Timberlands “is focused on growing and harvesting high quality timber and other forest products for a broad customer base primarily located in Asia and North America.”
Timberlands is also a large exporter of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills in the USA and Asia.
CIC is a wholly state-owned company under the Company Law of the People’s Republic of China and is headquartered in Beijing. CIC was established in 2007 and has acquired approximately $200 billion of China’s foreign exchange reserves that have formed the foundation of its registered capital.
