HONG KONG Feb 10 (Reuters) – A joint venture set up
by China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd and Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China Ltd has raised
$230 million towards a $500 million fund for building
residential property in China, according to a report.

The companies are general partners in Harmony China Real
Estate Fund II, with each contributing $40 million in equity,
according to PERE, a publication devoted to private equity real
estate finance. It added that Dutch pension fund Algemene
Pensioen Groep had invested $150 million in equity in the fund.

ICBC, one of the country’s big four banks, and state-owned
COLI, the mainland’s largest developer by market capitalisation,
first teamed up in March 2010 on precursor Harmony China Real
Estate Fund, which closed with $286 million later that year.
PERE cited an announcement from the companies saying the fund
was fully invested in three property-development projects, in
the cities of Xian, Qingdao and Shenyang.

Private-equity finance is an increasingly popular method of
raising money for real-estate development in China as the
government leads a clampdown on bank, bond, equity and trust
market financing. Many property developers are launching their
own vehicles to bridge an estimated $111 billion financing gap
in 2012.

(Reporting by Alex Frew McMillan; Editing by Chris Lewis)