The developer behind some of Singapore’s most famous landmarks, such as Raffles City and Clarke Quay, has gone ahead and rebuilt itself. The restructuring tells us something about what it is that excites shareholders in the Asian financial centre nowadays — and gives a taste of what is to come in many industries globally.
CapitaLand Investment Ltd., which made its debut in the city’s stock market this week, is one of the world’s largest real-estate investment managers, modelled along Blackstone Inc. Gone are the cranes and the excavators of what was earlier CapitaLand Ltd. Together with land parcels and semi-finished buildings, the development activity has been spun off into a privately held firm.
A previous generation of Singaporean investors swore by banks and builders: The former transformed short-term deposits into long-term loans, the latter transfigured reclaimed ocean land into shopping centres and condominiums. But millennials are impatient. A development cycle of three to five years — and lumpy sales — have meant a perennial discount to net asset value even for a highly efficient firm like CapitaLand.
