Major investors are racing to acquire APAC data centre operator AirTrunk
AirTrunk leads today’s Mingtiandi headline roundup as the race heats up to acquire the APAC data centre platform. Also in the news, industrial specialist ESR buys more land for an India project and billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Center leads a slide in Hong Kong office rental values.
GIP, Blackstone, DigitalBridge Race to Acquire Australia’s AirTrunk
The race to acquire APAC data centre operator AirTrunk has accelerated, with bidders reportedly submitting offers for the company. The AFR reported that Macquarie Capital and Goldman Sachs collected first-round bids over the weekend for the Sydney-based company’s owners, Macquarie Asset Management and Canada’s PSP Investments.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Blackstone and an IFM Investors-DigitalBridge partnership have tabled non-binding indicative offers for AirTrunk, AFR reported, adding that GIP has also made a non-binding indicative offer. Read more>>
ESR Buys Land for Chennai Industrial Park for $33M
ESR has acquired an additional 27 acres (10.9 hectares) of land to expand its existing industrial and logistics park at Oragadam in Chennai for INR 2.76 billion ($33 million).
The enlarged area of ESR Oragadam Industrial and Logistics Park now spans 107 acres with a development potential of 2.5 million square feet (232,358 square metres). Read more>>
Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Center Loses a Third of Rental Value
Hong Kong’s tycoons are seeing their skyscrapers lose rental values by as much as a third, amid the worst commercial property market slump in more than a decade.
Billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Center led the decline among major offices in the city with a 33 percent drop in the five years through 2023, according to Centaline Property Agency. New buildings including The Henderson dented rents for existing ones, Centaline said. Read more>>
Korean Government to Allow REITs to Invest in Development Projects
South Korea’s finance ministry says it will ease regulations on REITS as part of efforts to help normalise the real estate project financing sector.
The government said it will create “project REITs” after drastically lifting regulations so as to allow a greater number of small investors to join the projects and will expand REIT investment targets to health care, data centres and other promising fields, according to the Economy and Finance Ministry. Read more>>
South Korea to Slash Real Estate Taxes Next Month
The South Korean government will amend real estate and inheritance tax rates next month as it moves to ease the levied burden.
Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said Monday that the details of the reform would be announced sometime in July, although Sung Tae-yoon, director of national policy at the presidential office, proposed a reduction in inheritance tax rates to a maximum of 30 percent and a restriction of real estate taxes to owners of highly priced homes or multiple homes with a very high total value. Read more>>
Singapore Preps for New Residential Site in Jurong East
Preparatory measures have been proposed for a new residential development along Yung Ho Walk in Jurong East, near Jurong Lake Gardens. A proposed amendment to the 2019 Master Plan has allocated a gross plot ratio of 4.6 to a 4.8 hectare (11.9 acre) residential site near Yuan Ching Road.
The development potential of the site was previously under detailed planning. The site is adjacent to another residential plot of about 5.2 hectares, but a proposed GPR for this site has not been released. Read more>>
Insurers Seen Facing ‘Material Risk’ From China Property Crisis
A protracted downturn in China’s property market could hurt the profitability of the country’s insurers, who are exposed to the sector through commercial real estate and may lack sufficient provisions to cover potential losses, according to analysts.
While the size of the insurers’ property investments are “generally moderate” relative to their asset bases, some insurers have exposure in excess of 15 percent of shareholders’ equity, according to a report published on Monday by Moody’s Ratings. For these groups, the impact of losses from property investments on their profitability and capital could be “material”, the report said. Read more>>
SingHaiyi-Led Group to Launch Jurong East Condo Sora
A SingHaiyi-led joint venture will start previews for its new Jurong project, Sora, on 22 June, with prices pitched at S$2,180 ($1,610) per square foot on average.
Prices for the 440 units in the 99-year leasehold project will start at S$1,850 per square foot, developers SingHaiyi and TK 189 Development said Tuesday. Read more>>
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