Will CDL be able to pull off new growth strategy?

CITY Developments Ltd (CDL) executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng is not one who is shy to express his views. Back in 2006/2007, he had stated that the group wanted to be a pure real estate company. "We don't want to be a hybrid company, a half-breed - half real estate, half financial," he had said then. He was alluding to the likes of rivals CapitaLand and Keppel Land that were making bold moves on the asset monetisation and property fund management fronts.

Back then, CDL was sometimes dubbed an old-fashioned, asset-heavy "brick-and-mortar" property group, ie, one involved in the traditional business of property development and long-term ownership of investment properties for rental income - unlike its competitors which were going asset-light by spinning property funds that they sponsored and to which they divested some of their properties, while also raising some equity for these funds from third parties.

At the same time, they had started building up a fee-income base from fund management activities to provide stabilisation to earnings and high returns on equity.