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 actually since been relabelled Frasers Property Australia. During the question-and-answer discussion, Miguel Ko, chairperson of CLI, said that the decision to sell Australand and invest more in China was generated before his time.
He added that the firm “did not have a prediction, certainly, about China’s condition nowadays” and did not intend to talk about his predecessors’ choices. At the time, China was growing and CapitaLand had a huge competitive advantage. “That could have been a major gain or an incorrect move. This is not a comment on whether my predecessors made a best or incorrect decision.”
Throughout the course of Nov 22, Lee Chee Koon, group CEO of CLI, claimed: “For exclusive credit we’ve developed our own team and created a partnership with teams from Wingate in Australia, stemming and underwriting deals and there’s a whole lot of more pipeline we can build in Australia and Asia-Pacific.”
At the time, Lim Ming Yan, CapitaLand’s then-president and group CEO, said that the divestment came amid “favourable” market conditions. Australand’s share rate likewise performed strongly in the past couple of months before the divestment. “This divestment would certainly enable us to reallocate capital to our core companies in Singapore and China.”
The company recently introduced that it had designated 2 top hires to newly established jobs to enhance its talent bench and spearhead growth in its focus market. Angelo Scasserra will be the CEO of CLI Australia, and Rahul Bharara is going to be its chief investment specialist. They are assumed to join the company in 1H2025.
It is useful that on Nov 25, the Australian Financial Review ran a story mentioning that CLI considered to acquire Wingate.
CLI even claimed it is going to invest as much as A$ 1 billion ($ 876.7 million) to increase funds under management (FUM) in Australia. In September, CLI shut its Australian Credit Programme (ACP). ACP is CLI’s maiden credit fund at A$ 265 million, backed by Asian investors.
In the course of its investor day on Nov 22, CapitaLand Investment’s (CLI) management stated it is seeking to expand its business in Australia.
CapitaLand offered its remaining 39.1% risk in Australand in March 2014 after partially divesting its share in November 2013 to strengthen trading liquidity.
