Morgan Stanley has recently purchased a 24,000-square-meter land in Luwan District of downtown Shanghai for a high-rise office building project worth 1.3 billion yuan (166.67 million US dollars), the Shanghai Securities News reported on Saturday.

This is another move of the large US investment firm to extend its investment in the real estate sector on the Chinese mainland, after it acquired in January this year a high-end housing project in Shanghai's Xuhui District for 530 million yuan.

As small and medium sized real estate developers sell land for lack of money, overseas companies speed up acquiring stakes in them and their projects and will have a greater say in the Chinese mainland's high-end real estate market, said the report.

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The Hong Kong-listed Kowloon Development Co Ltd announced on January 19 that it would raise 5.29 billion Hong Kong dollars to invest in the Chinese mainland's real estate projects.

On Jan 31, chairman of Hang Lung Properties Ltd Ronnie Chichung Chan said his company planned to invest 10 billion Hong Kong dollars in 2007 to increase its land reserves by 800,000 square meters on the Chinese mainland.

At the beginning of February, Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd acquired a 177,300-square-meter land in Shanghai's Putuo District for 2.2 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Meanwhile, a number of domestic real estate companies - including the Shanghai-based Shimao Group, the Hangzhou-based Greentown Real Estate Group and the Beijing-based Capital Group - have received international private equity investments, said the report.

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