And Badaling, badabam, a Beijing outlet mall is changing hands
Despite tales of retail woe from around the region, an announcement of the impending purchase of a Beijing shopping mall leads our headline roundup today, as a Singapore-listed REIT adds to its portfolio.
Also in the news, Hong Kong recorded its biggest monthly drop ever for retail sales in October, and the troubled city’s home prices fell for the fifth straight month as markets are squeezed between disappearing mainland buyers and ongoing protests.
Keep reading for all these stories and more.
BHG Retail REIT Sets Up S$455M Beijing Mall Buy
The manager of BHG Retail Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) has proposed to acquire Badaling Outlets, an outlet mall located in Beijing, for a purchase price of S$455 million. The proposed acquisition would be the REIT’s first investment in an outlet mall, the manager said in a regulatory filing.
Badaling Outlets consists of 14 buildings, has a gross floor area of around 58,348 square metres (sq m), a net lettable area of around 38,797 sq m and a site area of 128,690 sqm. Read more>>
Hong Kong October Retail Slump Worst On Record
Hong Kong’s retail sales in October fell by their steepest on record, as ongoing anti-government protests that have gripped the Chinese-ruled city for nearly six months scared off tourists and hit spending.
Retail sales in October fell 24.3 percent from a year earlier, government data showed on Monday, against a revised 18.2 percent drop in September and a 23 percent fall in August, as violent clashes spread across shopping districts and took a heavy toll on malls and restaurants. Read more>>
Hong Kong Home Prices Fall for Fifth Straight Month
Hong Kong private home prices slipped for a fifth consecutive month in October as the Asian financial hub grapples with its biggest political crisis in decades, although the pace of decline slowed.
October prices dropped 1.3 percent in one of the world’s least affordable property markets, compared with a revised fall of 1.7 percent in September, government data showed on Friday. Read more>>
Vietnam’s Empire Group Halts Payments to Investors in Danang Condotel Project
Major condotel project Cocobay Da Nang made headlines this week as its developer Empire Group announced it will stop paying buyers their annual returns starting next January.
The group chairman Nguyen Duc Thanh told 1,700 buyers that due to financial difficulties, they won’t be able to honor their commitment to pay annual returns of 12 percent on their investment for eight years, leaving many of them burdened with bank debts. Read more>>
Hong Kong Cosmetics Chain Sa Sa to Exit Singapore
Sa Sa International, Hong Kong’s biggest cosmetics retailer, will close all its 22 stores in Singapore and cut 170 jobs to save costs as it struggles to stem six years of losses, months of anti-government protests, and the US-China trade war.
Attempts to boost sales in recent years by restructuring the local management team and enhancing store display and product mix have been “far from satisfactory,” chairman and chief executive Simon Kwok Siu-ming said in a filing to the stock exchange on Monday. Read more>>
Singapore REITs Have Record Year with $16.9B in Acquisitions
Underpinned by a global hunt for yield, Singapore’s real estate investment trusts (Reits) are having a bumper year in deal-making as well as fundraising. The mantra that bigger is better will continue to drive capital market activity in the sector, analysts say.
Singapore-listed Reits have forked out $16.9 billion to purchase assets this year, already triple the previous peak reached in 2014. Read more>>
Sam Zell-backed SAMHI Hotels Gets Nod for India IPO
Gurugram-based SAMHI Hotels Ltd, which owns the largest number of Marriot, IHG and Hyatt hotels in India, has received regulatory nod to float an initial public offering.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued final observation to SAMHI Hotels’ IPO proposal on 29 November, according to information published on the capital markets regulator’s website. Read more>>
Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter, or bookmark Mingtiandi’s LinkedIn page for headlines as they happen.
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