Stocks to watch: Dairy Farm, StarHub, Ascendas Reit, Parkway Life Reit

THE following companies saw new developments which may affect trading of their shares on Friday:

Dairy Farm, StarHub: Pan-Asian retailer Dairy Farm will join the benchmark Straits Times Index with effect from Sept 24, replacing telco StarHub. The latest index review raises the  Straits Times Index's (STI) weightage of Jardine group companies - namely Dairy Farm, Jardine Matheson, Hongkong Land, Jardine Strategic and Jardine Cycle & Carriage - to 15.4 per cent. Dairy Farm's inclusion gives consumer goods stocks a 6-7 per cent weight on the STI, the Singapore Exchange said.

Ascendas Reit: Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) priced a private placement of 178 million new units at S$2.54 per new unit for gross proceeds of around S$452.1 million. The placement was 2.2 times subscribed, and came at the mid-point of the indicative price range of between S$2.528 and S$2.606 per unit. The Reit manager said that the deal drew "strong demand" from new and existing institutional, accredited and other investors.

Parkway Life Reit: The manager of Parkway Life Reit said on Thursday that its Japan asset managers, operators and residents at its Japan healthcare facilities in the prefectures of Osaka, Hyogo and Hokkaido, are accounted for with no reported injuries. The real estate investment trust (Reit) owns 46 properties in Japan, of which 16 are located in prefectures affected either by Typhoon Jebi, which hit western Japan on Sept 4, or a magnitude 6.7 earthquake which struck Hokkaido on Sept 6.

Declout Limited and Procurri Corporation have each requested trading halts.