Chua Hwee Song resigns from SPH Reit’s board
Yong Jun Yuan
SPH Reit on Wednesday (Jul 6) announced that SPH chief financial officer Chua Hwee Song will resign from SPH, the real estate investment trust’s (Reit) sponsor on Friday.
According to a separate internal email seen by The Business Times, SPH said that he is leaving the company to pursue his personal interests.
The company noted that Chua had helped to grow the non-media business, such as the building of the company’s purpose-built student accommodation portfolio across 30 properties in 18 cities.*
“He also played a key role in (the) successful spin-off of the media business to SPH Media Trust and the subsequent privatization of SPH by Cuscaden Peak,” it said.
In its bourse filing, the Reit’s manager said that Chua has also resigned as non-executive non-independent director of SPH Reit’s manager as of Wednesday.
He was formerly a member of the manager’s nominating and remuneration committee and holds 3,910 SPH Reit units.
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This comes after Cuscaden Peak, a consortium comprising Hotel Properties, businessman Ong Beng Seng and 2 Temasek-linked entities CLA and Mapletree, took SPH private and made an offer to acquire SPH Reit for S$0.9372 per unit in April this year.
On Jun 30, the chain offer for SPH Reit closed with valid acceptances in respect of 402.9 million units, representing about 14.36 per cent of total issued units. This brought Cuscaden and its concert parties’ stake in the Reit to 61.68 per cent.
Units of SPH Reit closed down 2.2 per cent or S$0.02 at S$0.89 on Wednesday.
*Amendment note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that SPH’s purpose-built student accomodation portfolio spanned 18 countries instead of 18 cities.
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