Chinese investment in EU dwarfs opposite flow

Chinese investors spent four times as much on acquisitions in the EU last year as European companies did in China, according the Financial Times reports. A report by Rhodium Group, a research firm, and the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think-tank in Berlin, estimates that Chinese direct investment in the EU surged 76% to 35.1 billion euro in 2016. EU acquisitions in China, by contrast, fell for the second consecutive year, to 7.7 billion euro.  “The growing gap in two-way investment flows is fuelling European perceptions of a fundamental lack of ‘reciprocity’ between the EU and China,” said Thilo Hanemann at Rhodium. The imbalance was particularly sharp in Germany, where Chinese acquisitions soared to 11 billion euro. German acquisitions in China totaled 3.5 billion euro, making 2016 the first year in which Chinese acquisitions in Germany exceeded German M&A activity in China.