Freehills has advised on a successful joint bid by Lend Lease and one of its managed funds, the Asian Retail Investment Fund (ARIF) to acquire Singapore’s Jurong Gateway Road site for S$748 million (approximately A$618 million).
The Freehills team was led by partners Justin O’Farrell in Sydney and Simon Taskunas in Singapore. O’Farrell said, ‘ARIF is an interesting structure, set up offshore as both a development and a hold fund. We assisted Lend Lease in ARIF’s establishment in 2006 and this latest investment sees it fully invested, with assets likely to be in the region of S$2 billion. It has rightly had great support from its wholesale investors.’
O’Farrell and Taskunas also assisted Lend Lease and ARIF on the purchase and development of its 313@somerset retail shopping centre on Singapore’s Orchard Road in 2006.
‘That site has been a great success story,’ O’Farrell said, ‘It’s a great example of Lend Lease’s end to end skills, through investment management to development via Bovis Lend Lease.’
The Jurong Gateway site will include a regional suburban shopping centre and commercial office tower, to be developed over the next few years.
The successful Jurong bid reflects Lend Lease’s ongoing growth in Asia. ‘The Singapore retail market has continued to perform well despite the global economic conditions, ‘ Taskunas said. ‘Jurong Gateway is being proposed as a second CBD for Singapore over the coming years, and it is an exciting opportunity for ARIF and Lend Lease, with the skills they can bring to bear here in Asia.’
The win is another in a long line of successes for Lend Lease and its wholesale funds over the past 12 months, including its wins at Barangaroo, the ING retail platform, the establishment of Lend Lease Real Estate Partners 3 and successful capital raisings for Lend Lease and for various of its wholesale funds. O’Farrell has assisted with many of these. ‘Lend Lease has got some great momentum across the Asia-Pacific,’ O’Farrell concludes, ‘and it’s just great for Freehills to be involved’.
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