LaSalle Investment Management, a unit of the world's second-largest commercial real estate broker, said it plans to triple its investments in Asia to US$20 billion from US$7 billion in the next three to four years.
The company plans to invest in markets such as Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, said Jack Chandler, LaSalle Investment Management's chief executive officer in the Asia-Pacific.
"Our Asian funds have outperformed our internal rate of return of about 18 to 20 percent, and have done better than other regions" in the past three to four years, Chandler said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. "Investors have to have international real estate in their portfolio."
More than 100 real estate funds may raise a record US$69 billion this year as investors seek better returns than stocks and bonds provide, according to Private Equity Intelligence Ltd.
Morgan Stanley raised a record US$8 billion for a real estate investment last month, after announcing in April it was buying All Nippon Airways Co's 13 Japanese hotels in the country's biggest real estate purchase by an overseas investor.
LaSalle, a unit of Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle Inc, manages more than US$44 billion in real estate assets. The company began investing in Asia in 2000 and has six regional funds. Japan accounts for most of its investments in the region and will continue to be its biggest market, Chandler said.
"There's an unprecedented amount of liquidity directed at Asia, and we will continue to see funds flowing in, especially for Japan as the economy recovers there," said Simon Smith, head of research at Savills Hong Kong Ltd, a real estate consulting company.
LaSalle has two logistics funds in Japan, where the company developed and invested in warehouses for the past five to six years, Chandler said.
"A large part of it is because of the substantial investments that Japanese companies have made in moving their production to China,"he said. "Those goods have to be brought back to Japan and also moved elsewhere."
Japan's commercial real estate market, the second largest in the world after the US, is recovering from a 15-year slump that reduced the value of properties by as much as 75 percent. Rental income yields are still higher than the cost of borrowing, even as interest rates will most certainly go up, Chandler said.
LaSalle is ninth-largest property fund manager in the world, according to a survey last year by the European Association for Investors in Non-listed Real Estate Vehicles and Europroperty magazine.
Dutch brewing company Heineken NV yesterday said that it has reached an agreement to acquire a subsidiary brewery of Taiwan’s Sanyo Whisbih Group (三洋維士比集團). Heineken is to assume majority ownership and management rights of the Long Chuan Zuan Co (龍泉鑽興業) brewery in Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔), the Dutch company said. It would become the first multinational brewing company to operate brewery in Taiwan once the acquisition is completed. The deal has been approved by the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Investment Commission, but details of the financial transaction cannot be disclosed at this time, as terms of the settlement have not been completed,
Had Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck hopped on an electric scooter rather than a Vespa in the classic film Roman Holiday, their spin around the Eternal City might have ended in tears. The number of crashes and near-misses involving the two-wheelers has prompted Rome authorities to impose some order on a booming rental market that began two years ago. The havoc came to a head earlier this month when two US tourists attempted a night-time drive down the Spanish Steps, causing more than 25,000 euros (US$26,392) worth of damage to the 18th-century monument. Caught on security footage, the couple in their late 20s
LOOK WHO OWES: China’s exposure to Taiwanese banks was the second-largest, with Luxembourg third, followed by Hong Kong and Japan, the central bank said The US remained the largest debtor country to Taiwan’s banking sector for a 27th consecutive quarter in the first quarter of this year, with its exposure rising 8.3 percent from a quarter earlier on the back of an increase in US bonds, the central bank said on Friday. Data compiled by the central bank showed that outstanding international claims by Taiwanese banks on a direct risk basis to the US stood at US$125.38 billion as of the end of March. Department of Financial Inspection deputy head Pan Ya-hui (潘雅慧) said that the US Federal Reserve’s launch of a rate hike cycle in
GREEN CITY: The company is set to invest US$8 billion to make electric vehicles and batteries for a new city that would rely entirely on renewable energy sources Indonesia said that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) is considering investing in the country’s new capital city, a move that would bolster the US$34 billion construction project. Hon Hai, which is known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is looking at setting up an electric bus system and an Internet of Things network at Nusantara, as Indonesia’s new capital is to be called, Indonesian Minister of Investment Bahlil Lahadalia said in a statement yesterday. Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Saturday to discuss the company’s plan to invest US$8 billion to build a manufacturing plant