China’s Anbang may buy Japanese property

China's Anbang Insurance Group Co is in talks to buy as much as $2.3 billion in Japanese residential property assets from Blackstone Group , two people involved in the discussions said, in what would be Japan's biggest property deal since the global financial crisis. The US asset manager is discussing the sale of properties it had bought from investors, including in a deal with General Electric Co in 2014, according to the sources. The deal could fetch about 260 billion yen, the sources said, marking the biggest Japan property transaction since a fund managed by Morgan Stanley bought 13 hotels from ANA Holdings Inc for 281 billion yen in 2007, the height of the property investment boom. Japan's property market has rebounded since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in late 2012 and championed ultra-easy money policies that have driven down interest rates and boosted asset prices in a bid to pull Japan out of decades of deflation. Privately owned Anbang has assets worth more than 800 billion yuan ($116 billion). It agreed in March to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts also from Blackstone for $6.5 billion as it expands its US hotels portfolio. In the same month the Chinese insurance group aborted a $14 billion bid for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.