CEO, Liew Mun Leong of  CapitaLand,Southeast Asia‘s largest property developer CapitaLand announced that the company is to:-

• deploy S$1 billion of S$1.8 billion (S$1 = RM2.44) in capital raised from a recent rights issue to its businesses in China, Vietnam and the Ascott Group.
• S$500 million of the S$1 billion will go to its China arm, S$299 million to Vietnam and the remainder to Ascott, a wholly-owned unit that operates serviced apartments.
• The rest of the S$1.8 billion will be kept for further investment opportunities.

Source: Reuter

• The hotel group plans to have 30 properties under three core brand names – Cliftonwood, Adham and Wings – by the end of 2008, with Malaysia being one of its targeted destinations,

• The group’s overall strategy was to reach 150 hotels by 2013 with expected total investment of over US$2bil,

• Institutional investors and high net worth individuals would be the backbone for such a growth drive,

• All properties operating under the brands would serve only halal prepared food, as interpreted by syariah laws and the syariah supervisory board,

• Although there were plenty of individual syariah-compliant hotels worldwide, their positioning was usually dictated by the owner, either as an independent hotel, one within a chain or due to the syariah laws of a country where they are situated whereas Almulla’s brand proposition is so distinct that guests will be confident that its brand values have universal consistency as the Muslim traveller market was expanding around the world due to the increasing wealth in their communities, combined with conscious lifestyle living, and it represented 10% of the world tourism market, being one of the fastest growing segments. Their average spending is 10% to 50% higher than that of the average leisure or business traveller. The bottomline is that conscious lifestyle tourism is expected to grow at a rate of 20% per annum, five times more than the average traditional market segment,

• According to the group, the specific destinations targeted are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Egypt, Malaysia and Thailand.

• It is also looking forward to setting up operations in Europe with 15 deluxe hotels, to be followed by 25 business hotels in “the second European wave”.

• The group plans to capture the Gulf Cooperation Council travellers who contribute over US$12bil annually on leisure travel alone.

According to the World Tourism Organisation,

• Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest outbound travel markets in terms of average spend with tourists from the kingdom spending US$6.7bil annually on overseas travel.

• The UAE travellers are close behind, at more than US$4.9mil, averaging US$1,700 per trip, which is US$500 higher than the European average.

Source: Bernama(26/10/07)

The firm’s bid in the government land sale topped a rival offer from a consortium comprising government-owned developer Mapletree and CapitaLand as well as a bid by IOI Group, the city-state’s Urban Redevelopment Authority said in a statement late on Sept 18. Li Hiaw Ho, executive director of CB Richard Ellis Research, said the winning bid translates to about S$1,409 per square foot of built-up area and will yield at least 800,000 square feet of office space. After adding construction costs, fees and interest, the total cost may work out to around S$3 billion, the Business Times newspaper said on Sept 20 citing industry sources. The land plot is located near Singapore’s Marina Bay-the future site of the city-state’s new financial district and a casino – Reuters(20/9/07) 

Based on Hwang DBS Vicker Research: