Digital Core REIT Acquires 15% of German Data Centre and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Data centres again lead Mingtiandi’s roundup of real estate headlines from around the region with a Singapore-listed REIT sponsored by Digital Realty completing a deal to boost its ownership of a German data centre. Also making the list is a potential Aussie student housing transaction and China’s sovereign wealth fund backstopping one of the country’s bad asset banks.

Digital Core REIT Completes Acquisition of Additional 15% of Frankfurt Data Centre

Digital Core Real Estate Investment Trust, through its subsidiary Digital CR Singapore 5, completed its acquisition of an additional 15.1 percent stake in a Frankfurt data centre, the REIT’s manager said on Friday (Dec 6).

This brings its interest in the Frankfurt facility up to 65 percent, from 49.9 percent before. It followed an extraordinary general meeting convened on Wednesday to vote on the proposed acquisition after the REIT announced its intention to raise its stake in September. Read more>>

Dexus Bids on Campus Living Villages Aussie Student Housing

The A$7.5 billion ($4.8 billion) listed landlord Dexus has submitted a bid for the Australian portfolio of big super’s student housing player Campus Living Villages, which this year resurrected a failed A$2 billion sale attempt from 2016.

Street Talk can reveal Dexus’s non-binding indicative offer, lobbed to sell-side adviser Goldman Sachs late last month, attempts to put together CLV’s circa 5700 beds and nine properties with the 7000 beds the fund manager already owns from its acquisition of AMP Capital’s real assets business two years ago. The two operate accommodation at rival universities in capital cities. As an example, CLV has RMIT in Melbourne, while Dexus has Australian National University. Read more>>

China Set to Sell Stake in Cinda to Sovereign Fund

The Chinese government plans to transfer ownership in one of the nation’s biggest bad-debt managers to a unit of its sovereign wealth fund in coming weeks as part of a regulatory overhaul, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Ministry of Finance is currently going through the process to move its holdings in China Cinda Asset Management Co. to Central Huijin Investment Ltd., the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. The plan is in its final stage but may still change or get delayed, they said. Read more>>

Australia’s Salter Brothers Aims for Hotel Business IPO

Melbourne-based fund manager Salter Brothers is advancing plans to list a hospitality vehicle by 2026, with hopes to build its portfolio into the largest hospitality vehicle in the Asia-Pacific as it expands to more than A$3 billion of hotels over the next five years.

The company is privately working up a scheme that will see it first raise funds via a convertible note to wealthy investors early next year and then undertake an initial public offer of key hotels by early 2026. Read more>>

Hong Kong Movie Star Chow Yun-Fat Cuts Price of Peak Home by 14%

Even the actor famed for playing tough-as-nails characters in Hong Kong classics like The Killer and Hard Boiled is taking a beating amid a slump in the city’s luxury property market.

Chow Yun-fat, a beloved local actor who went on to Hollywood fame, has had to slash the asking price of his luxury home in Hong Kong’s most exclusive enclave The Peak by about 14 percent, according to several property agents. Read more>>

New World Seen Facing Mounting Losses

Echo Huang Shaomei, the newly appointed CEO of heavily indebted New World Development (NWD), is facing a host of formidable challenges in the coming months: key among them, how the real estate giant can sell its costly projects without incurring significant losses.

Analysts predict that two of NWD’s major upcoming developments in North Point and Wong Chuk Hang will be loss-making, judging from their high land costs and the depressed pricing of recent projects. Read more>>

Hong Kong Hotel Industry Braces for More Challenges

Hong Kong’s hotel industry is likely to face more headwinds next year. A new lodging tax and heightened geopolitical tensions are among “worrying” issues that could further erode the city’s appeal as a tourist destination, analysts said.

The government will impose a 3 percent tax on hotel guests from January 1, while president-elect Donald Trump will occupy the White House next month to usher in another rocky period for US-China trade and tourism. Read more>>

Singapore’s Temasek Unveils $7.5B Private Credit Strategy

Singapore’s state investment company Temasek said on Friday that it has established a wholly owned private credit entity with an initial portfolio amounting to S$10 billion ($7.5 billion), consisting of direct investments and credit funds.

Institutional global investors in recent years have been ramping up activity in the booming private credit market.    Private credit, or lending to companies by institutions other than banks, has grown rapidly as stricter regulations following the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023 make it more expensive for traditional lenders to finance riskier loans. Read more>>

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