Corporate digest

Lian Beng Group

LIAN Beng's 75 per cent-owned subsidiary has exercised a call option to acquire the BreadTalk IHQ Building from BreadTalk Group.

Consequently, it is deemed that BreadTalk and Lian Beng (Tai Seng) have entered into a binding contract for the sale and purchase of the property.

The property is being acquired through a consortium in which Lian Beng holds a 75 per cent direct stake via its wholly owned subsidiary, while its consortium partners, Apricot Capital and 32RE Investments hold 20 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

Lian Beng announced in January that the consortium is buying the building in Tai Seng in a S$118 million deal. BreadTalk is to rent the property as an anchor tenant for an initial 10 years. It can then either extend its lease by another five years at market rate, or buy back the building at a mutually agreed price.

The 10-storey building - which mainly houses BreadTalk's international headquarters, retail brands, warehouses and kitchens - has a gross floor area of 248,902 square feet.

The land tenure runs out in 2040, but can be extended for 30 years.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding

YANGZIJIANG Shipbuilding recently entered into shipbuilding contracts for another 31 vessels, with a total contract value of US$1.74 billion.

These include ten 82,300 deadweight tonnage (DWT) bulk carriers, while the rest are for containerships, including four 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containerships and five 12,200 TEU containerships.

The contracts are mainly scheduled for deliveries in 2022-2023 and will not have any significant impact on the group's earnings for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2021.

Year to date, the group has secured 60 shipbuilding contracts with an aggregate value of US$3.04 billion.