Vivendi Set to Agree Shanghai Theme Park
Vivendi Set to Agree Shanghai Theme Park
Shanghai has embraced a plan for a theme park to be built in the city by Universal Parks & Resorts, a subsidiary of France's Vivendi Universal, seemingly shunting aside an earlier agreement to negotiate with the Walt Disney company on a similar project.
City officials and executives from Universal will hold a press conference on Saturday to announce "an agreement in principle" to build the park, valued at $870mn, according to one news report.
The announcement comes just months after the disclosure that Disney was in negotiations with the Shanghai government, also to build a theme park.
That report caused widespread anger and consternation in Hong Kong, where Disney is already due to begin construction in January of a theme park, to open in 2005 or 2006.
Shanghai, which sits at the entrance to the Yangtze river delta and its 80mn increasingly wealthy citizens, offers a prime location on the mainland for a theme park operator.
Shanghai's leaders have long been impatient over what they regard as the slow pace of talks with Disney and may have also baulked at offering the same deal which the US company received in Hong Kong.
In a deal that was criticised for being too generous to Disney, the Hong Kong government agreed to invest HK$22.45bn (US$2.88bn) in finance and infrastructure costs to attract the Disney park to the territory.
The high profile press conference this morning, scheduled to be attended by Shanghai's top officials, is a sign that China's commercial capital has committed itself to Universal.
Jean-Louis Diefenbacher, the chairman and CEO of Vivendi Universal Asia-Pacific, is already in Shanghai attending a media conference.
A spokeswoman for Disney in Hong Kong also signaled yesterday that the entertainment company was unlikely to seal any agreement soon for a second theme park in China.
"In all likelihood, we will not open a second theme park (in China) before 2010," she said.
The site set aside for Universal is in Pudong, an area that contains Shanghai's financial district but also large tracts of open space.
Universal's two state-owned partners will be the Shanghai Jinjiang group, China's largest hotel owner and operator, and Waigaiqiao group, the operator of a free-trade zone nearby.