Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club and Real Madrid Club de Futbol Reach Strategic Cooperation

BEIJING, August 3, 2011 -

On August 2, Professor Xu Jiayin, Board Chairman of Evergrande Group, met Florentino Perez, Real Madrid president, in Guangzhou. Both sides reached a consensus and attended the signing ceremony for strategic cooperation, officially indicating that Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club and Real Madrid Club de Futbol begin their all-round cooperation with football youth training, commercial games, introduction of football players, brand promotion, etc. An original report from Sina Leju follows:

President Florentino Perez pinned great hopes on his visit to China on his strategic cooperation with Evergrande. “This is our first visit to Guangzhou. We are very hopeful that through this visit, we can establish a long-term and good cooperation relationship with Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club.”

According to reports, Evergrande and Real Madrid will set up in China the largest football school in Asia. Real Madrid will send its coaching staff to China for teaching; Evergrande will be responsible for daily operation of the school. The school plans to enroll 3,000 students for the first term, is preliminarily located in Guangdong Province and will run completely in the business operation pattern.

As a rising team in the Chinese Super League (”CSL”), Guangzhou Evergrande Team has never lost in a game in the 2011 CSL football season, and becomes a “bellwether” in the CSL football field. The rapid development brings great brand benefits to its parent company Evergrande Group. Evergrande Group, which has share control over Evergrande Football Club, is a leading real estate enterprise listed in Hong Kong. In recent years, Evergrande has completed its layout planning in the second-tier and third-tier cities in China quickly. Relying on its standard scale-operation, Evergrande has had a number of outstanding performances, and ranked top in China in terms of sales area and construction area.  

According to public notice, in the first half of 2011, the total amount of sales of Evergrande is 42.32 billion yuan, increasing by 101.7% on a year-on-year basis; the total sales area is 6,117,000 square meters, increasing by 83.2% on a year-on-year basis. As of June 28, 2011, the total cash balance of Evergrande reached 33.24 billion Hong Kong Dollars, with an unused credit line of 40.67 billion Hong Kong Dollars. The total available cash is up to 73.91 billion Hong Kong Dollars.

Mike, +86-10-5953-9521, +86-10-5859-1005 (fax), mike-young at qq.com