Chaoda 'cleared' in land holdings claims

SHANGHAI - Chaoda Modern Agriculture Holdings Ltd, the Chinese vegetable producer defending a claim from Next Magazine that it overstated its land holdings, has not exaggerated its assets, Macquarie Group Ltd said after visiting plantations.

Macquarie visited two of Chaoda's largest projects, which represent 17 percent of its farmland, and found "nothing to indicate that Chaoda was exaggerating its land bank", analysts Jake Lynch and Jamie Zhou said in a report dated June 9.

They used global positioning satellite technology and odometers to measure the plantations.