UE owners said to have picked Perennial for talks

Singapore

UNITED Engineers Ltd's largest shareholders picked Perennial Real Estate Holdings Ltd for final talks to buy the century-old Singapore property group, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Perennial, led by chief executive officer Pua Seck Guan, edged out other suitors including KKR & Co and SingHaiyi Group that also submitted final bids, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. An agreement could be reached as soon as next month for United Engineers, which has a market value of S$1.7 billion, according to one of the people. Any deal will add to the US$11.6 billion of acquisitions in Singapore's real estate industry over the past 12 months, data compiled by Bloomberg show.