Tencent Said Vying to Buy $3B Watsons Stake and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Retail leads the way today in Mingtiandi’s collection of real estate news from around the region, as the parent company of China’s ubiquitous WeChat app is said to be aiming for a $3 billion stake in Li Ka-shing’s Watsons chain, and Australia’s Lendlease may be getting ready to list its retail assets via a Singapore REIT. Continuing the shopping theme, Germany’s Metro has started a tender for its mainland China stores, and there are updates on India’s DLF and Canada’s CPPIB just a few paragraphs down the page.

Tencent May Bid for Temasek’s $3B Watsons Stake

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd is weighing a bid for part of Temasek Holdings Pte’s stake in global retailer A.S. Watson Group, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Singapore state investment company is considering selling around a 10 percent stake in the drugstore chain for about $3 billion, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Unnamed investment funds could join the parent firm of China’s WeChat for the investment in Watsons, which is a unit of Hong Kong tycoon Victor Li’s CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd., the people said. Read more>>

Lendlease Plans Singapore Retail REIT Listing

Australia-listed developer Lendlease Group is planning to list its retail assets in a real estate investment trust (Reit) on the Singapore Exchange, according to a report.

The report, which cited Thomson Reuters’ IFR Asia, said that Lendlease could raise up to US$500 million (S$676.3 million) from the listing. Read more>>

Metro Kicks Off China Unit Sale, Likely to Fetch $2B Valuation

German wholesaler Metro AG has kicked off the sale of its China operations by calling for bids, in a deal that would value the business at between $1.5 billion and $ two billion, two people with direct knowledge of the deal said.

Metro, which owns 95 stores in China and real estate assets in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, is planning to offload a majority stake in its China business, said the people.

The sale move is part of a global reorganization of the wholesaler and comes as China’s wholesale and retail sectors are experiencing disruption from e-commerce players. Read more>>

CPPIB May Open Office in Beijing

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which manages around C$368.5 billion ($277 billion), is considering opening its first office in China as it seeks greater exposure to the world’s second largest economy.

Canada’s largest pension fund investor could open an office in Beijing as soon as next year, Hong Kong-based head of Asia Pacific Suyi Kim said in an interview this month. Staff there would then work closely with CPPIB’s 130 employees in Hong Kong, which have helped to invest C$42 billion in Greater China so far, she said. Read more>>

Self-Storage Provider RedBox Acquires Three Properties in HK

Hong Kong based premium self storage provider RedBox Storage Limited (RedBox) has acquired three properties in the city after deploying a sum of $50 million committed by Chinese real estate investment manager InfraRed NF.

In a statement, InfraRed, which acquired a 90 percent stake in RedBox after the investment, said the self storage provider has completed three property purchases in Yau Tong, Tuen Mun, and Tsuen Wan districts.

The acquisitions expand RedBox’s gross floor area (GFA) by 116 percent, making it the fourth largest self storage operator in Hong Kong in terms of GFA, InfraRed said. Read more >>

DLF to Invest $108M for New Commercial Project in Gurugram

Realty major DLF will invest around $108.9 million (INR 7.500 billion) for construction of a new commercial project in Gurugram (also known as Gurgaon) as it seeks to encash rising demand of office and retail space from end users as well as institutional investors, according to sources.

The company has decided to build a new commercial project on 232,257 square metres (2.5 million square feet) area in Gurugram. It will sell office and retail space in this commercial project, and not adopt lease model, sources said. Read more >>

Hong Kong Now World’s Priciest City, Alongside Paris and Singapore

Hong Kong and Paris are now tied with Singapore as the world’s most expensive cities to live, according to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Hong Kong moved up three places globally to join Singapore, which has been the world’s most expensive place to live for the last five years. It is the first time that three cities have been tied for first place in the survey. Paris, Singapore and Hong Kong are all seven per cent more expensive to live than New York, the benchmark city. Read more >>

Almost One Third of Chinese Cities are Shrinking

The perception that China’s urbanisation is still in full swing is untrue for nearly one third of Chinese cities, whose populations are shrinking, according to new findings by a Chinese university.

A research team from Tsinghua University used satellite imagery to monitor the intensity of night lights in more than 3,300 cities and towns between 2013 and 2016. In 28 percent of cases, the lights had dimmed.

China now has 938 shrinking cities, according to Long Ying, an urban planning expert at China’s Tsinghua University, who founded and led the research group, Beijing City Lab. This is more than any other nation on Earth. Read more >>

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