Peter’s Holdings targets medium high-cost property market

KUALA LUMPUR: Peter’s Holdings Sdn Bhd is positioning itself as a developer of medium high-cost property and is looking for land in prime and established locations in the Klang Valley.

Managing director Peter Loke Kwok Seong said while the company continued to develop its low- and medium-cost residential project in Petaling Utama, its aim was to be a player in the medium high-cost property market.

“We are sourcing for land in niche and matured areas like Taman Desa, Taman Seputeh and Ampang,” he said.

He said this at a media preview of the Papillon Desahill Condominium at the project’s site sales office-cum-show unit in Taman Desa yesterday.

The condominium, on 4.5-acre freehold land, marks the company’s foray into the medium high property sector.

“At Peter’s Holdings, we pride ourselves on having the ability to create value for our customers. We believe the viability of a property developer depends on how much value he can create.

“The more value is created, the more projects will be demanded and the more repeat buyers there will be. This is a cycle and a philosophy we hold true,” Loke added.

Papillon Desahill, with a gross development value (GDV) of RM180mil, offers 225 units in two, 15-storey wings. About 30% of the units have been sold since its soft launch a month ago.

The price range is about RM400 per sq ft. There will be four designs with 1,312 to 2,059 sq ft sizes and priced from RM480,000 to RM800,000.

The 16 penthouse duplexes with 2,498 to 3,661 sq ft are priced between RM1.1mil and RM1.6mil.

Business development manager Katrina Loke is confident that 80% of the units would be sold within a year.

“Most of our purchasers are local up-graders,” she said, adding that a 2% discount per unit was being offered for a limited period.

CIMB-Mapletree Management (which manages the CIMB-Mapletree Real Estate Fund 1) is collaborating with Peter’s Holdings to market and promote the project under a profit-sharing basis.

Loke said its ongoing and future projects had a GDV of RM1.25bil.

By The Star (by S.C.Cheah)

Resorts World gets loan for S'pore casino project

SINGAPORE: Resorts World at Sentosa said yesterday it had obtained a S$4 billion (US$3 billion) loan to finance two-thirds of its casino project in the city-state.

Resorts World, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Genting International, is building an integrated casino resort on Singapore’s Sentosa island estimated to cost S$6.0 billion dollars and scheduled to open in 2010.

Ten banks participated in the syndicated loan, which has a tenure extending to 2015, the company said.

It will fund two-thirds of the project’s total cost, with the remaining to be paid through equity raised from a rights issue last year by Genting, Resorts World said.

Resorts World said it obtained the credit facility in February “despite a very difficult global credit environment.” The casino resort, spanning 49 hectares (121 acres), will include Southeast Asia’s first and only Universal Studios theme park and the world’s largest oceanarium, as well as six hotels offering a total 1,800 rooms.

Las Vegas Sands is building Singapore’s other casino called Marina Bay Sands near the business district.

By AFP

Landmarks to clear up casino issue 'soon'

LANDMARKS Bhd will "soon" clarify whether it can build Indonesia's first legalised casino at Bintan, an island on which it plans to develop a water resort city, a group official said.

Media reports of late have highlighted that Indonesia's strict anti-gaming laws may prohibit gaming activities from being part of the planned RM9.6 billion tourism development project on Bintan.

"We definitely want to clear the issue up. We'll inform when we're more certain," Paul J.H. Leong, deputy chief operating officer of Bintan Treasure Bay Pte Ltd (BTB), a unit of Landmarks, said yesterday after a shareholders meeting. He declined to divulge more information.

At the meeting yesterday, shareholders unanimously approved a plan for Landmarks's wholly-owned subsidiary to buy a remaining 26 per cent stake it didn't own in BTB for RM360.8 million.

BTB is the company undertaking the Bintan Treasure Bay project. It owns 338ha of leasehold land there.

Landmarks had only last year paid RM403.8 million for its 76 per cent stake in BTB. This time around, it's paying a hefty price for the rest of the shares to take into account the revised price of BTB's assets after a revaluation on January 30.

Landmarks expects to complete the acquisition in the second quarter.

Having full ownership of BTB allows the Landmarks group to have full control of the direction of the Bintan Treasure Bay project.

It also enables it to get full access to the cashflows generated from the project.

Shareholders yesterday said they raised questions on the project's funding, to which an official responded that negotiations with banks were ongoing.

The group had a cash balance of RM372.8 million as at the end of last year.

By New Straits Times (by Adeline Paul Raj)

CIMB Mapletree to set up RM5b property fund

CIMB Mapletree Management Sdn Bhd, a joint venture between CIMB Group and Mapletree, a leading real estate company in Singapore, is targeting to set up RM4.7 billion to RM5 billion property fund early next year.

CIMB Mapletree’s chief investment officer Muhyiddin A. Razack said the fund would be focusing on Malaysian properties.

To date, a total committed capital of property assets worth RM400 million has been established by the company, he said at a media briefing after the launch of a property project in Taman Desa, off Jalan Klang Lama, by Peter’s Holdings Sdn Bhd.

“With borrowings, the total fund size will reach RM1.4 billion to RM1.5 billion from RM400 milllion currently, of which 80 per cent of the fund is already allocated mainly for properties in Malaysia,” Razack said.

In Malaysia, CIMB Mapletree has been involved in property projects in Penang, Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur, he said.

CIMB Mapletree’s latest venture is a condominium project in Kuala Lumpur in collaboration with Peter’s Holdings.

“We are also doing sale and lease for properties in Technology Park Malaysia,” Razack said.

The company also has interest in property projects overseas, including a shopping mall near Bangkok, he said.

“Good investment properties are hard to come by these days,” Razack said, adding that CIMB Mapletree will remain focused on properties in the office, retail and residential sectors.

CIMB Mapletree is involved in a profit-sharing arrangement with Peter’s Holdings for the project known as Papillon Desahill Condominium.

Peter’s Holdings’ senior general manager Andrea Loke said gross development value of the project was estimated at RM180 million.

It featured 225 condominium units, priced from RM480,000 to RM800,000 each, which are scheduled to be completed by 2011, she said Loke said about 35 per cent of the units had so far been taken up with most of the buyers from Malaysia.

“The target buyers are young affluent purchasers and investors. We have received encouraging response since the soft launch early this month,” said Peter’s Holdings’ managing director Peter Loke.

The company is into residential and commercial property projects in Perak, Selangor and Johor with gross development value of about RM1.2 billion.

It is also involved in the manufacturing of tower cranes in China.

By Bernama

Penang mulls monorail option

State government wants to speed up project and is seriously considering Melewar’s proposal, says source


MEGA PLAN: Tunku Yaacob (left) presenting Melewar’s proposal to Lim

PENANG may carry out a monorail project on its own to speed things up and not wait for the federal government to do it, a source said.

The state government is seriously considering a proposal which was presented to them by the Melewar Industrial Group (MIG) this week.

However, the federal government, via Syarikat Prasarana Negara Bhd, has given a letter of intent to another group of companies in January.

"Melewar's interest is a reflection that the private sector has confidence in dealing with an opposition-led state and the DAP-PKR-led state leadership is delighted," a source told Business Times.

"This interest marks the first major step towards the realisation of the monorail project in Penang and the state government is not likely to allow this opportunity for a privately-funded project to slip," the source said.

The timing of MIG''s presentation of the RM2.2 bil monorail system for Penang is said to be good for the state, in light of the federal government's move to review certain mega projects that had been previously promised to the state under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

During a presentation to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and his executive council on Tuesday, MIG managing director and chief executive officer Tunku Datuk Yaacob Tunku Abdullah said the proposed system will boast a 12-car train of monorail and can move 17,600 passengers per hour.

He said the system, covering a 52km track, is set to operate on a single line and run on three different loops from locations like Gelugor, Farlim in Air Itam and Gurney Drive into the city.

It is learnt that the state government is keen on Melewar's proposition, as the state would not need to allocate funds for the project.

"All the state authorities need is to look into the land acquisition process and how it can speed things up to ensure the monorail project, which has been promised to the people of Penang for so many years, actually becomes a reality," a source noted.

MIG is one of several parties which participated in a tender exercise for the development of a monorail system for Penang on November 14 last year which was called by SPNB.

In January this year, SPNB awarded a letter of intent for the project to Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd, which had formed a consortium with Penang Port Sdn Bhd and Scomi Engineering Bhd.

When contacted yesterday to enquire the status of the monorail project for Penang, SPNB chief executive officer Shaipudin Shah Haron declined comment.

Industry executives when contacted on the viability of a privately-funded monorail system for Penang, cautioned that the option by the state authorities to open tenders for the project could involve a minimum of 12 months before a new tender process can be closed.

"This is because a study will need to be carried out on the proposed corridor for the transit system, along with an engineering study to identify where the system is to be built," the official said.

Also being questioned is how much land the state government will give away to the company which constructs the system, added to the risk of ownership of the transit system which would belong to the state government.

By New Straits Times (by Sharanjit Singh and Marina Emmanuel)