MANILA – The SM group said it has become a stronger contender in the Chinese property market with the consolidation of its real estate assets.

On the sidelines of the Philippine Stock Exchange Bell Awards last night, SM Prime Holdings Inc. president Hans Sy said the company will be in a better position to bring its residential business and build Lifestyle Cities in China as a result of the consolidation.

“We’re coming in as one company, SM Prime. With the consolidated group, we can really go to China with residential because it was only the mall before,” the son of Filipino billionaire Henry Sy said.

The younger Sy said the formula for expanding in China is “something similar to the Philippines” in a sense that SM Prime is “more customer-oriented.”

“We believe the Philippine formula works very well in China. It’s a bit different but it works very well,” he said.

Next year, SM Prime is beefing up its presence in China with the launch of a new mall in Zibo within the Shandong province. It will have a total gross floor area of 154,000 square meters.

In China, SM Prime has five shopping centers in the cities of Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu, Suzhou and Chongqing.

“The whole economy may have slowed down but the slowdown is still at 7.5 percent. I cannot say the same about the first-tier cities, but if you talk about Chengdu, it’s still double-digit growth,” Sy said.

SM Prime will come up with a five-year plan encompassing the expansion of the mall, residential, office, hotels, convention center and tourism segments either towards the end of the year or early 2014, Sy said.

SM Prime is now the holding firm for the malls, residential, commercial, hotels and conventions, and leisure businesses.

The Sy family is in the final phase of consolidating its property companies and assets under publicly listed SM Prime, thereby creating Asia’s biggest real estate firm with a market capitalization of $12.4 billion.

SM Land earlier completed its exchange offer for shares in SM Development Corp and Highlands Prime Inc, both of which had been delisted from the stock market. Likewise, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had cleared the merger of SM Land and SM Prime with the latter as the surviving entity.

SM Prime is spending $3.4 billion in the next two years to accelerate the expansion of the property businesses. This will be funded through a combination of internally generated cash, debt and equity.