Singapore's Biggest Property Deal of 2023 Falling Apart

Wow, this is a huge deal. I mean, what happened? Well, I think the reason for the deals collapse was actually quite technical and quite boring in a sense. Basically when it was purchased last year by this Chinese BNA called Duchenhua, basically there was only one plot. So, but there’s this scheme in Singapore college development initiative which basically requires that you have two plots in order for a redevelopment of this shopping mall. So this shopping mall has been around for quite a while. It’s it dates back to 1974 when it was built. So it was one of the quite older malls and Orchard Rd. which is quite a good sea area. It’s the main shopping bell Singapore after all. So when when the deal was announced last year, a huge deal about six, 670, a million U.S. dollars, it was the biggest deal of 2023 essentially. And basically the there was quite a lot of excitement around the fact that was going to be redeveloped. But the authorities basically said that because of the fact that it’s only one single plot rather than two, the government’s and you said that that doesn’t fit the criteria. And so it was rejected and it was at a time that tycoon really said like let’s walk away. I’m just wondering whether it has to do with the fact that it is Chinese money. Yes, 670 million USD. But you know given the fact that we’ve seen fraud cases in Singapore to do with Chinese investors, whether you know that could be one of the reasons about the hesitance. I guess in a sense the government have not explicit said that yet. And so far the the kind of explanations given by government at least is that there isn’t actually any explicit reason why they’re rejected because of the of the fact that it is Chinese money too is one of the kind of original Chinese tycoons that we made a fortune in Singapore real estate like quite a while back, even before the mean money laundering case came to light. So then there’s a lot more scrutiny of the fact that scrutiny of Chinese money nowadays because of the fact because of the huge money laundering case and today the amount of monies that we’re talking about here is significant. So there’s The thing is scrutiny and saying there is a lot of concern about it and when it was announced last year, it attracted our eyeballs. So it can’t. And and certainly after the deal collapses, there’s still this amount of money out there, which reason we have to go somewhere. So I think there’s a lot of attention now, where exactly do we put this money now? We put in Singapore. We put it elsewhere in other countries outside of Singapore. Singapore would hate to think that it’s going to say no to $670 million. What’s next? What can be expected? I think the question now is, is in two ways. So first of all, obviously, that mall still has redeveloped. It’s one of the oldest malls in Singapore and one of the one of the things that the government in Singapore has kind of put a lot of emphasis on this whole initiative essentially that that kind of spurred the deal in the 1st place is that they really want to spruce up Orchard Rd. Because after all, some of the malls there compared to some of the more glitzy ones that we’ve seen in recent years have, are getting quite old. And because of the pandemic and our reasons for four has kind of reduced and hasn’t really come back to what it was before Pandemic. So there is incentive to really buy them all. So it’ll be interesting to see which buyers can’t come forward to buy them all. As for do, I guess the question is where we put his money, where he put his money in Singapore, where obviously the rate tape and the kind of regulations seem to be a bit more tighter than it was before and a bit harder to kind of overcome. That’s all kind of to be seen and the market is going to be quite interesting going for the next few months.