Mapletree Commercial Trust, the owner of properties including Singapore’s VivoCity shopping mall, hired banks for a $1 billion initial share sale this quarter, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

The trust, a unit of Mapletree Investments, hired CIMB Group Holdings Bhd., Citigroup Inc., DBS Group Holdings, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as advisers on the sale, the person said, asking not to be identified as details are private.

 

Mapletree Commercial Trust’s listing would follow a similar sale by Mapletree’s industrial property unit, Mapletree Industrial Trust, which raised $938.5 million in October. Mapletree Industrial units, sold to investors at 93 cents, closed little changed at $1.07 today.

 

The chief financial officer of Mapletree Investments, Wong Mun Hoong, said in October that Mapletree Commercial Trusts’s initial public offering would be ready by the first half of 2011. Mapletree Investments spokesman Sonny Phua said he could not immediately comment. The Wall Street Journal reported the IPO earlier today, citing people it didn’t identify.

 

Mapletree Investments is the real estate unit of Singapore’s state investment company, Temasek Holdings.