Luckin Coffee is taking aim at Starbucks
Starbucks may have a new competitor in the competition to satisfy China’s caffeine addicts after an up and coming mainland coffee shop chain announced today that it had raised another $200 million. Also in the headlines, Savills Investment Management has been putting its London expertise to work helping Korean investors shop for buildings, and Singapore’s UOL has acquired a Sydney office tower. Read on for all these stories and more.
Luckin Coffee Raises $200M at $2.2B Valuation
Luckin Coffee, an up-and-coming coffee chain with ambitions to challenge Starbucks Corp in China, said on Wednesday it has raised $200 million in its latest funding round, bringing the company’s valuation up to $2.2 billion.
The fundraising was led by investors including Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and China International Capital Corp, the company said in a press release. Read more>>
Savills IM Buys London Building for £267M on Behalf of Korean Investors
Savills Investment Management has bought 125 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1, for £267 million ($334 million) from Almacantar.
Savills Investment Management concluded the transaction on behalf of a club of Korean institutional investors managed by Vestas Investment Management. The building, in Soho, consists of 190,000 square feet of office, retail and ancillary space comprising 11 floors, including the ground floor and basement. Read more>>
UOL Buys Sydney Office Tower for S$153M
UOL Group’s Success Ventures unit has entered a sale and purchase agreement with private equity firm Proprium Capital Partners, the trustee for the Linford Hold Trust, to acquire a freehold property in Sydney, Australia for S$152.84 million ($111 million).
The property is located on 72 Christie Street and sits on approximately 2,815 square metres of land with around 11,259 square metres in net lettable area. The eight-storey office building with a four-storey basement parking area is 100% tenanted with the lease expiring in 2028. Read more>>
Singapore Private Condo Prices Rose 0.6% in November
The rental market for private non-landed property picked up in November while it slowed for HDB properties, according to flash data from real estate portal SRX.
Rents for condominiums and private apartments in November increased by 0.6 percent from the previous month. The monthly decline in rents for October was raised to 0.9 per cent from the 0.7 percent estimated earlier. They were unchanged in August, from an earlier SRX estimate of a 0.1 percent dip. Read more>>
Beijing’s Tongzhou Becomes Commuter Suburb
Beijing has launched a grand plan to create a glittering financial hub in its southeast end, but so far it is functioning as a bedroom community to thousands of urban commuters — exactly the opposite of what the local government wants.
The story of Tongzhou’s envisioned financial district — the reality today versus the grand plan in coming years — points to a mismatch between land supply and demand in Beijing and other big Chinese cities, where local governments are keen to foster new industries and generous in granting commercial and office land, while stingy about residential land. Read more>>
Financial Pressure Builds on Mainland Developers
Chinese real estate enterprises’ capital flow has been under great pressure this year, with mergers and equity transfers occurring frequently in the second half of this year, a trend analysts expect to continue in 2019.
More than 30 small and medium-sized developers had transferred bonds and equities in the second half of the year, while among public companies, 46 property mergers and acquisitions were reported, with a total transaction value of RMB 48.9 billion ($7.07 billion), according to data released by Shanghai-based information provider Wind Info. Read more>>
Singapore Home Prices Expected to Stay Flat in 2019
Just as Singapore’s residential property market has begun to revive after a four-year slump, government moves to curb the exuberance might play spoiler going into the new year.
Home prices that are forecast to climb as much as 10 percent this year could remain flat in 2019 and may decline as much as 3 percent, estimates from property brokers compiled by Bloomberg News showed. Read more>>
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