ING Real Estate plans second China fund
Posted on December 17, 2007
Filed Under Town House
The world’s biggest property fund manager ING Real Estate plans a second China fund next year, worth about US$700 million, in response to growing enthusiasm for Asian property at a time when Western markets are suffering. With a global credit crunch depressing activity in European and US commercial property markets, ING Real Estate is pushing further into Asia. But the unit of Dutch financial services firm ING Groep NV is also looking to snap up and privatise battered real estate investment trusts (Reits) in mature markets.
“On the one hand you see part of the world slowing down, triggered by the credit crunch. And then you see another part of the world - China, Japan, and even Australia—where there are lots of opportunities,” ING Real Estate chairman and chief executive George Jautze told Reuters in an interview.
ING Real Estate, which has a global portfolio worth more than 100 billion euros (S$214.4 billion), set up two pan- Asian funds this year worth a combined US$1.6 billion in equity. A new fund for Japan is in the works for next year, and after spending most of the US$350 million raised at the end of 2006 for residential development in China, the firm plans a follow- up fund about twice that size. The fund will be marketed in the first half of next year, according to ING Real Estate’s Asia head, Robert Lie, and could invest in some commercial property as well as housing.
(Source: sgpropertypress.wordpress.com/Reuters/Business Times, 29 Nov 2007)
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