UPDATE: Lend Lease Consortium Preferred Bidder For A$1.4 Billion ING Retail
December 15 2009 - 7:06PM
Dow Jones News
Lend Lease Corp. (LLC.AU) said Wednesday it is part of a
consortium which is the preferred bidder for the A$1.4 billion ING
Retail Property Fund.
The fund owns 14 shopping centers in Australia and New Zealand,
including Perth's A$450 million Joondalup Shopping City. In recent
months the fund has sold three assets: Brisbane's Wynnum Plaza and
the Endeavour Hill and Geelong Homemaker centers.
Australia's largest property developer has been on the lookout
for distressed assets while property development financing and
construction is constrained, and ING Groep NV has said previously
that it plans to sell its insurance and investment management
businesses to concentrate on banking.
Lend Lease, which had A$1 billion in cash on its books at June
30, will contribute up to around 20% of the capital needed for the
deal, with the rest coming from its managed funds and capital
partners, Investment Management Chief Tarun Gupta said in an
interview with Dow Jones Newswires.
"Some of the assets will come under the management of Lend Lease
Retail, and the assets will go into the respective managed funds we
have, and become part of our overall platform," Gupta said.
"The assets from our point of view are attractive to our
platform. There are some really high quality assets and we believe
we can manage them and add value over the long term."
Gupta declined to name the other consortium partners.
The Australian Financial Review and The Australian newspapers
reported earlier this month that the ING Retail fund's investors
were five pension fund including Singapore's GIC Real Estate, one
of that country's sovereign wealth funds, and Prudential PLC.
The acquisition, which is subject to further discussions, may be
completed in the next six weeks, Lend Lease said.
Lend Lease said earlier this month that it was in discussions
with the fund.
-By Andrew Harrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-3-9292-2095;
andrew.harrison@dowjones.com
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