CDL Files for £500M London Office REIT and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

After a series of woeful headlines linked to its mainland China investments,, Singapore’s City Developments Ltd is back in the news today with a report that it has filed to list a set of London office properties on the SGX, and an announcement that it has won a development site on the western side of the island in a joint bid with a unit of Hongkong Land.

Rising home prices in Hong Kong, Singapore and other points on the globe also get some virtual ink today and mainland investigators are said to be taking a closer look at Evergrande’s bond sales.

CDL Files to List London Office Properties in Singapore-Listed REIT

City Developments Limited (CDL) has applied for an initial public offering of a real estate investment trust (REIT), which could raise some £500 million ($709 million) on the Singapore Exchange, Bloomberg has reported.

The REIT, which aims to list in Q3, will have a portfolio size of about £1.8 billion, sources told Bloomberg on Thursday. Read more>>

CDL and MCL Land Win Tender for SG Executive Condo Site with $302M Bid

Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) has awarded the tender for a land parcel at Tengah Garden Walk to a joint venture between City Developments Ltd and Hongkong Land unit MCL Land for S$400.3 million ($302 million).

Sitting on a plot area of 22,020.8 square metre (sq m), the maiden executive condominium (EC) housing site has a maximum gross floor area of 61,659 sq m and is estimated to accommodate 615 units. Read more>>

Singapore’s MBFC Says Demand Strong for Former StanChart Space

The asset manager of the Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) has received strong interest from potential tenants for about 200,000 sq ft office space that it has been actively marketing in the development’s Tower 1. This is part of the roughly 400,000 sq ft currently leased to Standard Chartered (StanChart) in the tower.

The space being marketed occupies nine-and-a-half floors. “We have received very strong interest from occupiers in a range of industries, given the prominent location and views over Marina Bay,” said Rob Garman, executive director of Hongkong Land, which owns a one-third stake in the commercial space at MBFC. Read more>>

Hong Kong Property Deals Rise to Two-Year High of $11.3B in May

Bullish investors pushed the value of property transactions in Hong Kong to a 24-month high last month, helped by rising house prices and luxury flat sales.

The value of transactions rose 2.9 per cent month on month to HK$87.6 billion (US$11.3 billion) in May, according to figures from Land Registry on Wednesday. It was the highest since May 2019, when the turnover stood at HK$90.32 billion. Read more>>

Singapore Leads Asia as Global Home Prices Jump Most Since 2006

Housing prices worldwide are rising the most since before the global financial crisis, following a market frenzy seen in places from New Zealand to Canada to Singapore during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Globally, average prices jumped by 7.3 per cent in the 12 months to March, the fastest pace since the fourth quarter of 2006, Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index report showed on Thursday (June 3). The index benchmarks the average prices across 56 countries and territories. Read more>>

Lendlease Funding Move Seen as Acquisition Signal

A recent fundraising initiative by Lendlease Global Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust (LReit) could be a sign that an acquisition is on the way, said brokerage CGS-CIMB in a Tuesday report.

LReit had last month issued S$200 million in perpetual securities at 4.2 per cent per annum. The issue was upsized from S$150 million, with a tightened price from the initial guidance of 4.35 per cent, after strong demand led to oversubscription. Read more>>

Mainland Regulators Said Probing Evergrande Bond Sales

Beijing’s financial regulators — scarred by the Baoshang bankruptcy — are looking into alleged related-party transactions between Evergrande and Hong Kong-listed Shengjing Bank Co., according to WeNews, a premium service of Caixin, the influential Chinese financial news outlet.

Shengjing, based in northeastern China’s Liaoning province, counts Evergrande as its largest shareholder. Through opaque dealings, the bank bought a lot of the developer’s bonds, which other investors stayed away from, Caixin reported. Read more>>

Beike Has Chance to Clear Up Dual-Class Share Structure

China’s $59 billion answer to Zillow has an opportunity to remodel its corporate governance. The founder of online real estate broker Ke, Zuo Hui, left behind a 39% economic stake and 81% of the voting rights when he died last month. There’s no good reason for a family trust to wield such feudal control. Converting the shares to common ones would be the right thing to do.

Zuo’s death stunned the company and its investors. Little information had been disseminated about his health, but Caixin subsequently reported that he had been battling lung cancer since 2013. Read more>>

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