HNA's acquisitions flurry raises questions

HNA Group’s $6.5bn bid for a 25% stake in the Hilton hotel chain has cemented its reputation as one of China’s most acquisitive groups. In less than two years the privately controlled company has announced foreign and domestic transactions worth more than $33bn. However, the dizzying rate of HNA’s recent acquisitions, the diversity of its targets and indebtedness of many of its units has raised questions about the pace and coherence of its expansion, according to the Financial Times. Sceptical analysts point to HNA’s $6bn purchase in February of Ingram Micro, a software company, and RocketSpace, a US start-up incubator in San Francisco, as evidence of its sometimes haphazard expansion. HNA’s defenders reply that the group’s international expansion is a rational response to the limits it faces at home.