Lendlease Chairman Pressured to Leave Quickly and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

The drama around Australia’s Lendlease entered a new chapter this week with the developer’s largest shareholder calling for the speedy departure of the company’s chairman, with that story leading Mingtiandi’s headline roundup. Colonel Sanders also makes the list with Carlyle Group launching a buyout of KFC Japan and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala takes a cornerstone stake in PAG’s renewable energy fund.

Australia’s Aware Super Calls for Speedy Exit of Lendlease Chairman

Superannuation heavyweight Aware Super has called for Lendlease chairman Michael Ullmer to swiftly depart the embattled company’s board and urged it to seek an external replacement.

The surprise intervention by the superannuation giant which holds a near 9 percent stake in the developer adds to the upheaval facing the board ahead of a strategy update on May 27. Read more>>

Carlyle Group Buying Out KFC Japan With $863M Offer

Fast food operator KFC Holdings Japan said on Monday that a Carlyle Group-backed fund launched a tender offer for its shares in a deal worth JPY 135 billion ($863 million).

Crispy Holdings, which is wholly owned by Carlyle, will offer 6,500 yen per share, a 20 percent premium to KFC Holdings Japan’s closing price on Monday. The tender offer will last from May 21 to July 9. Buyout funds have been increasingly active in Japan as more corporations step up sales of non-core assets or seek buyers due to succession issues. The deal would be the third largest private equity buyout this year, according to LSEG data. Read more>>

Mubadala Taking Cornerstone Stake in PAG Renewable Energy Fund

Mubadala Investment Company, the Abu Dhabi sovereign investor, has made a cornerstone investment in PAG’s Asia Pacific renewable energy platform, primarily focused on supplying solar power to corporations across Japan.

PAG REN I will leverage PAG’s multi-decade experience in the Japanese real-estate space as well as the expertise of its in-house renewable energy team, PAG Renewables. The platform aims to operate across developed Asia Pacific economies with a strong focus on Japan, and will support Japan’s ambitious solar plans, with the country targeting to install 108GW of solar capacity by 2030. Read more>>

Singapore’s CDL Reports Higher Home Sales in Q1

Singapore’s City Developments Ltd said on Tuesday that sales of projects like Lumina Grand and the Myst helped it achieve resilient performance in the first quarter, while occupancy in its office portfolio softened to 91.1 percent.

The company also said that RevPAR (revenue per available room) in its Singapore hotels climbed 12.4 percent from the same period last year, with some help from Taylor Swift. Elsewhere in Asia, RevPAR grew by 2.1 percent. Read more>>

Vanke Gets Fresh Loan From Bank of China to Boost Recent Borrowing Over $1B

China Vanke Co., one of the nation’s few real estate giants that’s yet to default, has gotten a fresh loan, pushing recent bank borrowings over $1 billion as it shores up its finances.

The Shenzhen-based company has obtained a RMB 1.2 billion ($166 million) loan from Bank of China’s branch in the city, according to an exchange filing on Monday. The funds will be used for a development project in Changzhou, it said. The latest deal brings the total of loans that Vanke and its units have taken out this month to RMB 7.85 billion ($1.08 billion), according to data compiled by Bloomberg based on public filings. Read more>>

Singapore’s OUE Launches Share Buyback

Property developer OUE on Monday (May 20) proposed undertaking an off-market purchase of its ordinary shares at S$1.25 apiece under an equal access scheme.

The offer price represents a 20 percent premium over the average of the last dealt prices of the share over the last five consecutive market days on the Singapore Exchange. The company will buy back up to around 84 million shares, or about 10 percent of its shares in issue as at Apr 26, 2024 – the day the group’s share purchase mandate was approved. Read more>>

CapitaLand Ascendas REIT Issues $223M in Green Notes

CapitaLand Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust has issued a S$300 million ($223 million ) 10-year green bond through its trustee, HSBC Institutional Trust Services (Singapore) Limited.

The senior unsecured fixed rate green notes will bear a coupon of 3.73 percent per annum, or 66.1 basis points over the 10-year Singapore Overnight Rate Average, said DBS on Monday (May 20). DBS and OCBC are joint lead managers and joint bookrunners for the bond. Read more>>

China Govt Land Sales Hit Eight-Year Low as Developers Retreat

China’s local governments raised the least revenue from land sales in eight years, another sign of the nation’s deepening housing crisis that has forced Beijing to pump in more cash.

Incomes from transfers of rights to use state-owned land – where local authorities sell land to property developers – fell 21 percent in April from a year earlier to RMB 238.9 billion ($33.7 billion), according to Bloomberg calculations based on data released by the Ministry of Finance on Monday (May 20). That’s the lowest figure since May 2016. Read more>>

Tune in again soon for more real estate news and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on X, or bookmark Mingtiandi’s LinkedIn page for headlines as they happen.