Following CLI’s investor day, Aussie press carries story on CLI acquiring Wingate
In 2014, CapitaLand unloaded Australand Property Group, that was then snapped up by Frasers Property and has since been relabelled Frasers Property Australia. Throughout the question-and-answer program, Miguel Ko, chairman of CLI, claimed that the decision to offer Australand and invest even more in China was prepared just before his time.
CLI also claimed it will invest as much as A$ 1 billion ($ 876.7 million) to grow funds under management (FUM) in Australia. In September, CLI shut its Australian Credit Programme (ACP). ACP is CLI’s first credit fund at A$ 265 million, supported by Asian investors.
The company recently introduced that it had assigned 2 top hires to recently formed jobs to enhance its talent bench and spearhead progress in its target market. Angelo Scasserra will be the chief executive officer of CLI Australia, and Rahul Bharara will be its main investment expert. They are expected to join the company in 1H2025.
During its investor day on Nov 22, CapitaLand Investment’s (CLI) management mentioned it is seeking to expand its company in Australia.
At the time, Lim Ming Yan, CapitaLand’s then-president and group chief executive officer, stated that the divestment came amidst “beneficial” industry situations. Australand’s share price additionally carried out highly in the past couple of months prior to the divestment. “This divestment would enable us to reallocate capital to our core companies in Singapore and China.”
It is interesting that on Nov 25, the Australian Financial Review ran a story stating that CLI intended to get Wingate.
He added that the firm “did not have a crystal ball, certainly, about China’s situation these days” and did not wish to discuss his predecessors’ decisions. At that time, China was thriving and CapitaLand had a huge competitive advantage. “That could have been a major gain or an incorrect move. This is not a talk whether my predecessors made an ideal or bad decision.”
CapitaLand offered its lasting 39.1% risk in Australand in March 2014 after partly unloading its stake in November 2013 to improve trading liquidity.
Throughout the course of Nov 22, Lee Chee Koon, group CEO of CLI, stated: “For exclusive credit we’ve developed our very own group and developed a collaboration with teams from Wingate in Australia, stemming and signing offers and there’s a lot of more pipeline we can build in Australia and Asia-Pacific.”
