The hotel, on Hengshan Road in the city's Xuhui district, will be the city's second Regal. It previously announced it would open the Regal Shanghai East Asia Hotel in October.
This five-star, 350-room hotel will be part of the integrated Shanghai Sports Centre, which also features a convention centre and sports centre surrounding a stadium which will seat 80,000.
The sports centre is to open in October, when it will host the All National Games.
'We are working hard in Shanghai because it's one of the gateway cities that we will expand in,' Mr Lo said.
'Just like in Hong Kong, where we have four hotels and are building a fifth one - and there may be more - Shanghai we see as a metropolitan city that can afford to have more of our hotels.' Regal's largest source of earnings geographically is the US, where it has 27 hotels under management. The US operations accounted for 50 per cent of its turnover, or about $1.7 billion, in its last financial year.
Regal decided last year to call off the separate flotation of its US hotels because it had no urgent need to raise the cash.
Mr Lo said the company had been 'chased by merchant bankers' keen to go ahead with the flotation, which had been expected to raise US$200 million.
'It's always on our minds whether it's a good time to do it,' Mr Lo said.
Regal would buy more than one new hotel in the US this year. 'It is on our agenda to expand our portfolio of quality acquisitions at the right price,' he said.
The next purchase was likely to be in New York, a city Regal had been eyeing for a number of years. 'Negotiations are at an advanced stage and we are hopeful of an announcement of an acquisition soon,' Mr Lo said.
Atlanta and San Francisco are other gateway cities in which the company is interested.
Last year, Regal added the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and the Bostonian Hotel in Boston to its US portfolio.
Closer to home, Mr Lo said the company had not decided on the fate of the Regal Airport Hotel, despite the scheduled closure of the adjacent Kai Tak airport next year.
'Apart from being an airport hotel, it's built itself up as more of a regional hotel in that area,' he said. 'There are lots of offices and industries in that area and lots of activities in Kowloon East and it's almost the only hotel in that area.
'We have to see what will happen to the whole area before we assess the future prospects of the hotel.' Hong Kong has four Regal hotels and is building its fifth at Chek Lap Kok airport. It also has expressed an interest in developing the hotel project at the Tai Kok Tsui MTR station.
Mr Lo said this did not necessarily spell the end of its hotel ventures in the territory.
'We'd probably be interested in any large hotel project in Hong Kong in strategic locations that would be complementary to our existing portfolio,' he said.
Regal reported a 36.3 per cent surge in net profit to $525.5 million for the year to December. A consensus of analysts had expected a rise of just 17 per cent.
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