Elegant Group entity buys The Clementi Mall for S$809 million
The price works out to about S$4,100 psf on net lettable area; the net yield is 4.1%
[SINGAPORE] An entity linked to Zhao Zhichao of The Elegant Group is said to have inked a deal to buy The Clementi Mall for S$809 million from Cuscaden Peak Investments.
This is 8 per cent higher than the indicative guide price of about S$750 million for the mall reported by The Business Times in August.
The S$809 million price works out to about S$4,100 per square foot based on a net lettable area of around 195,772 sq ft; the net yield is about 4.1 per cent based on the net price inclusive of buyer’s stamp duty.
BT understands the Zhao-linked entity recently entered into a sale-and-purchase agreement with Cuscaden Peak Investments.
In late October, BT reported that the entity was in exclusive due diligence with a view to buying the five-storey mall next to Clementi MRT station.
The mall is on a site with a 99-year leasehold tenure that began on Aug 31, 2010, leaving a balance term of close to 84 years. The property is a stone’s throw from The Elegant Group’s Grantral Mall@Clementi, formerly known as CityVibe.
Cushman & Wakefield and Savills, which brokered the sale of The Clementi Mall, conducted an expression-of-interest exercise that drew 12 offers at the initial close of submissions on Oct 3.
Of these, eight parties were shortlisted by Cuscaden Peak Investments to sharpen their pencils and submit their highest offer at the second closing on Oct 17.
Following this, the entity linked to Zhao was picked to do exclusive due diligence with a view to making a purchase.
Cuscaden Peak Investments is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cuscaden Peak, a consortium initially made up of Hotel Properties Ltd (HPL), CLA Real Estate Holdings and a Mapletree Investments unit which took over Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) in 2022.
The takeover also resulted in Cuscaden Peak Investments acquiring assets – including The Clementi Mall – held by SPH Reit, which was renamed Paragon Reit.
HPL has since exited the consortium, while Paragon Reit was privatised in April and delisted in June.
Since 2023, the group has sold a string of assets it acquired from the SPH takeover.
These include three freehold Nassim Road bungalows for a total of S$206.7 million, a student housing portfolio of properties in the United Kingdom and Germany worth £1 billion (S$1.7 billion), as well as The Seletar Mall for S$550 million.
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