Royal Group of Companies founder and chairman Asok Kumar Hiranandani
A Singaporean property tycoon picks up a bank building in London’s West End for a hotel conversion, with that deal leading today’s headline roundup. Also making the list, Canada’s Brookfield markets a stake in a Perth office tower and Australia’s Sentinel recruits Japanese capital partners to help fund Brisbane office buys.
Singapore’s Royal Group to Invest $141M in London Hotel Project
Singaporean property billionaire Asok Kumar Hiranandani’s Royal Group of Companies has bought a listed former NatWest bank in London’s Piccadilly with plans to convert it into a £1,000 per night luxury hotel opposite the Ritz.
The Royal Group bought the building at 63-65 Piccadilly for £65 million ($83.2 million) from Trophaeum Asset Management and plans to invest a further £45 million in its first London site. It wants to develop a 50-room boutique hotel at the 102-year-old Grade II-listed Portland stone building. Read more>>
Brookfield Marketing Stake in $481M Perth Office Tower
Canadian property giant Brookfield is looking to sell a one-quarter stake in the A$800 million ($481 million) Chevron headquarters in Perth in one of the biggest post-pandemic tests of demand for top-end buildings in the Western Australia capital.
The move is partly a bet that international and local heavyweights will chase prime office assets amid global share market turmoil, which could drive them into the direct property market. Investors are tipped to continue their flight to quality, with building values expected to be supported as interest rates are cut by central banks to offset the impact of impending trade wars. Read more>>
Sentinel Eyes Japanese Capital Partners for Brisbane Office Assets
Australian property investors such as Sentinel Property Group CEO Warren Ebert are heading to Japan to seek out capital for the first time — just as large Japanese property investors widen their scope of investment in real assets.
Ebert, who met institutional investors in meetings two weeks ago in Osaka and Tokyo about funding the purchase of two undisclosed office properties in Brisbane, said it was his company’s first direct attempt to raise money from overseas investors. Read more>>
Country Garden Sales Dropped 25% in March
Country Garden Holdings’ sales slide continued in March, with the developer faring worse than the broader China housing sector. The Foshan-based company’s monthly contracted sales dropped 25.3 percent from a year earlier to RMB 3.2 billion ($437 million), Bloomberg calculations based on corporate filings show.
While that was an improvement from a 38 percent year-on-year slump in February, the decline was from an already-low base and was much steeper than the country’s top 100 developers’ 11 percent drop in new home sales in March. Read more>>
Frasers Centrepoint Trust Seeks $313M in Preferential Offering
The manager of Singapore-listed Frasers Centrepoint Trust on Tuesday announced the launch of a preferential offering at S$2.05 per unit.
The issue price represents a 7.4 percent discount to the volume-weighted average price of S$2.2136 each. The preferential offering will be made on the basis of 54 units for every 1,000 existing units held as of 5pm on 3 April, to raise gross proceeds of S$421.3 million ($312.6 million). Read more>>
CDL Says Board Changes Deviated From Norms
The board of City Developments Ltd, the property company controlled by Singapore’s wealthiest family, said it deviated from its usual processes earlier this year in appointing two new directors.
But it defended the actions as “necessary and appropriate”, due to what it said were “governance concerns in relation to the role and involvement” of an advisor at its hotel subsidiary. Read more>>
Fitch Withdraws Rating for Mainland Developer Hopson
Fitch Ratings has withdrawn China-based Hopson Development Holdings’ long-term foreign currency issuer default rating of CCC- and the company’s senior unsecured rating of CCC- with a recovery rating of RR4.
Fitch is withdrawing the ratings because Hopson has chosen to stop participating in the rating process. Therefore, Fitch will no longer have sufficient information from the issuer to maintain the ratings. Accordingly, Fitch will no longer provide ratings or analytical coverage for Hopson. Read more>>
Taiwan Manufacturer Cuts Asking Price on Singapore Industrial Facility
Taiwanese display maker AUO has lowered the asking price of its facility in Singapore’s Tampines industrial estate to S$380 million.
The six-storey facility, on a sprawling site of 997,330 square feet (92,655 square metres), was first marketed last year at S$400 million after AUO shut down production in Singapore in December 2023. The property has a remaining land tenure of 34 years. Read more>>
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