Re, ...our Govt leasing the port of Darwin to the Chinese.
How did that come about?
Chinese buyer of Darwin Port struggles to pay interest and heavily in debt
Jul 5 2017
The new Chinese owner of Darwin Port is heavily indebted and has struggled to make interest payments on money borrowed to buy the lease, raising doubts over promises to upgrade the port and fund a new $200 million hotel on a nearby site.
An analysis of the finances of the Landbridge Group and its billionaire founder Ye Cheng shows he does not fit the stereotype of a cashed-up Chinese billionaire with access to cheap funding from state-owned banks.
Rather, Landbridge's local accounts and documents lodged in China show an over-extended company scrambling from one loan repayment to the next and paying up to 12 per cent interest on some borrowings.
The company is equally exposed to refinancing risks in China's volatile debts markets, where it has been forced to scrap four bond issues in the last two years...
