IE Singapore to sell off unit

IE Singapore to sell off unit

By NISHA RAMCHANDANI

INTERNATIONAL Enterprise (IE) Singapore yesterday proposed plans to divest its entire interest in Singapore Information Services Pte Ltd (INSIS) through its wholly owned subsidiary, IE Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd (IEH). IEH holds 100 per cent of INSIS’ issued share capital.
INSIS was established in 1989 to take over the publishing and printing of trade directories from the Trade Development Board (TDB). Over the years, it has added other facets to its business, including an e-commerce platform which provides a database of firms and connects both local and foreign companies for the buying and selling of goods and services. Other services include exhibitions and event management. INSIS is being divested in accordance with Singapore’s ‘Yellow Pages Rule’, which states that government agencies should not provide non-core, non-strategic businesses that can be provided by the private sector.

‘INSIS has become a mature business. IEH has taken the view that this is the best time to divest its interest so that the business can achieve better scale and growth. IE will be seeking to maximise return to the shareholders,’ said a spokesperson from IE. The process for the proposed divestment is to begin immediately and will be conducted through a contested process. Ernst & Young Corporate Finance Pte Ltd will act as financial adviser.

Source : Business Times - 07 jun 2008

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Raffles Hotels makes its mark in Moscow -Singapore

Raffles Hotels makes its mark in Moscow -Singapore

The company has inked a deal to manage a 130-room luxury hotel
By CHEAH UI-HOON
IN MOSCOW

RAFFLES Hotels & Resorts yesterday signed a management contract to stamp its brand on a 130-room luxury hotel a stone’s throw from Red Square and the Kremlin.
 
Mr Pereverzev: Says Raffles’ standards correspond to the luxury hotel’s requirements 
Opening in 2011, Raffles Moscow will be housed in a mid-17th century building - and is likely the oldest heritage building in Raffles’ portfolio of 22 hotels.

Located in Moscow’s Kitay-Gorod district, it is a three-minute walk from Red Square and the Kremlin, and 10 minutes from the Bolshoi Theatre, plus being right next to the ‘Tretyakovsky Proyezd’, a strip housing the most luxurious and prestigious shops in Moscow.

Interestingly, Kitay- Gorod popularly translates into ‘Chinatown’ although ‘Kitay’ which means ‘Cathay’ is likely to be derived from the architectural style of the old walls of the quarter.

The building, which is under an investment contract between Moscow government and ALT Corporation, will soon be redeveloped.

It’s also part of a larger development that will include apartments, high-end retail galleries as well as historic buildings, such as an 18th century Russian Orthodox Church and a house where Napoleon Bonaparte had stayed before.

The contract was signed by Vladimir M Pereverzev, chairman of the board of directors, ALT Corporation, and Diana Ee-Tan, president, Raffles Hotels & Resorts yesterday, witnessed by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, who were also in Moscow.

Raffles Moscow will also feature six restaurants and bars and RafflesAmrita Spa, which at 1,300 square metres, will be one of the largest spas in Moscow.

Ms Tan said that Moscow is a fascinating destination with great appeal to world travellers.

‘In terms of tourism growth, the city enjoyed a robust growth of 7.5 per cent in international tourist arrivals last year and a phenomenal growth of 16 per cent in revenue per available room.’

Mr Pereverzev said that the company chose Raffles after examining several global hotel brands and chains, because the brand’s standards correspond to the requirements of the luxury hotel.

 
Source : Business Times - 07 jun 2008

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Wee family goes Singapore condo-shopping

Wee family goes Singapore condo-shopping

Its members pick up three units in Nassim Park Residences for $40m
By KALPANA RASHIWALA

(SINGAPORE) Members of the Wee family have bought three units at Nassim Park Residences near Botanic Gardens for a total of nearly $40 million, a filing by UOL Group to Singapore Exchange (SGX) on Wednesday shows.

 
Wee Ee Cheong, CEO of United Overseas Bank and son of UOL chairman and controlling shareholder Wee Cho Yaw, picked up a penthouse for $18.33 million or $2,670 per square foot (psf).

Two of his siblings bought a sky unit each in the five-storey freehold condo at about $10.6 million each. Wee Ee Chao, who sits on the UOL board, bought a unit with his wife Jennifer for $3,308 psf, while his sister Wei Chi snapped up a unit for herself for $3,293 psf.

The SGX filing also showed that UOL director Alan Choe’s son Jonathan, through his company Montgomery Hills, bought a ground-floor unit, that comes with its own pool, for nearly $11.5 million or $2,513 psf.

Buyers of the four units received a special 2 per cent discount. More than 40 units have been sold in the development, which has a total 100 units, since its preview began the week of Vesak Day.

The average price achieved is said to be somewhere in the $3,000-$3,200 psf band, although analysts expect the developer to raise prices slightly when the project is officially launched next week. The project is being marketed by CB Richard Ellis and Savills.

The units in the development are priced at $10 million and above, with each having at least four bedrooms.

Nassim Park Residences has drawn a good mix of local and foreign buyers, and market watchers attribute its encouraging take-up to its ‘reasonable pricing’.

‘Had this project been launched a year ago, it could have been priced in the mid to high-$3,000 psf range, on average,’ a market watcher said.

UOL is developing Nassim Park Residences jointly with Kheng Leong group (a privately owned vehicle of the Wee family) and Japan’s Orix Corporation, on the former Nassim Park condo site that UOL bought in August 2006 for $380 million.

Its land cost worked out to about $1,131 psf of potential gross floor area inclusive of an estimated development charge of $8 million at the time. The breakeven cost then for a new development on the site was estimated at $1,600-1,700 psf.

UOL has also sold over 40 units of its 88-unit Breeze by the East condo along Upper East Coast Road near The Bayshore since it began selling the project around mid-April.

The five-storey freehold project was initially priced at about $950 psf on average, but this has since been raised to $980 psf, BT understands.

Even so, the pricing is considered attractive compared with the $1,600-$1,700 psf average price that Tiong Aik picked for its 20-storey freehold Parc Seabreeze in the Marine Parade/Joo Chiat area in early May.

Tiong Aik has since withdrawn the project from the market.

 
Source : Business Times - 07 jun 2008

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Singapore JTC quietly works its magic to help Singapore stay ahead

Singapore JTC quietly works its magic to help Singapore stay ahead 

It has changed landscape to meet investors’ needs and also helped country bag lucrative deals: PM

By Fiona Chan, Property Reporter 
HERE’S TO A JOB WELL DONE: PM Lee, flanked by Mr Foo and JTC chief Ow Foong Pheng, toasting the agency at its 40th anniversary dinner. Mr Lee praised JTC for being ‘dynamic and vigorous’ in upgrading itself to meet investors’ needs. — ST PHOTO: EDWIN KOO
 
SHIFTING land boundaries, realigning highways and diverting live pipelines - these dramatic moves are all in a day’s work for JTC Corporation.
Quite ambitious for what many see as just a staid government agency.

But as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out last night, Singapore’s largest industrial landlord has plenty of strings to its bow that go far beyond creating business clusters such as one-north at Buona Vista and Jurong Island.

Mr Lee said at JTC’s 40th anniversary dinner that the agency had also worked its behind-the-scenes magic to change the landscape to suit investors’ demands.

Its proactive work has, in turn, enabled Singapore to bag multibillion-dollar deals such as the world’s biggest solar plant, said the Prime Minister, who was the guest of honour at the Shangri-La Hotel function.

He went on to praise JTC for being ‘dynamic and vigorous’ in constantly upgrading itself to meet the changing needs of investors.

Mr Lee also lauded the agency’s recent move to sell its flatted factories and business parks, saying this would allow it to focus on its core functions of planning industrial estates and allocating industrial land.

But he warned that new challenges lay ahead for JTC and for Singapore.

‘Countries are vying more aggressively for investment projects than ever before,’ he said in a speech to more than 500 JTC clients and partners.

This has made it difficult for developed economies like Singapore to sustain manufacturing sectors, he added.

Singapore is trying to attract firms into taking part in new businesses such as research and development, product design and marketing, and JTC must support this effort by making it easy for investors to operate here.

Another task is to create more usable space in land-scarce Singapore. JTC has already begun work on innovative ideas such as the Jurong Rock Cavern, an underground oil storage facility, as well as very large floating structures to use ocean space.

Above all, JTC must stay nimble to take on new and unexpected challenges as they emerge, Mr Lee concluded.

One way JTC is dealing with this is through an internal review exercise, said chairman Cedric Foo last night. This will focus on maximising land resources, energising the industrial property market and undertaking projects that are too large-scale or specialised for the private sector.

So far, the agency’s record has been one of success.

JTC began life in 1968 as Jurong Town Corporation, founded to develop Jurong Industrial Estate - a risky project to turn the marshy jungle of Jurong into a modern industrial hub.

The estate had a slow start and was dubbed ‘Goh’s folly’ after Dr Goh Keng Swee, who initiated the project. Few entrepreneurs were willing to invest in Jurong at first, but it eventually attracted huge foreign investment.

This triumph stems partly from JTC’s ‘pioneering spirit and courage’, said Mr Ong Geok Soo, who has been with the agency for 38 years and is now its assistant chief executive.

But he admitted that the challenges JTC now faces ‘have become more intense because of increased competition’.

One such challenge is rising costs, according to Mr Eng Poh Tzan, the senior vice-president of NatSteel Asia, one of JTC’s longstanding customers.

He applauded JTC’s customer service, but said he wanted the agency to keep rentals affordable. NatSteel Asia leases about 38ha from JTC.

Mr Ong replied that JTC had to ‘look at the market rates’, but emphasised that ‘we are still below market costs as a whole’.

 
Source : Straits Times - 07 jun 2008

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Blasts, fireballs as blaze destroys factory in Singapore Woodlands

Blasts, fireballs as blaze destroys factory in Singapore Woodlands 

By Daryl Tan 
GUTTED: Mangled oil drums, collapsed ceiling beams and roof fragments (above) litter the premises of KL Koh Enterprise. Earlier, there were loud explosions, and fireballs shot up to 10m into the sky as firefighters fought the flames. — ST PHOTO: FRANCIS ONG

 
A BIG fire swept through a Woodlands Terrace factory at about 2.45am yesterday.
At the height of the fire, loud explosions could be heard as far away as Admiralty Road and fireballs shot up to 10m into the sky. Across an area about half the size of a football field, the entire factory area was engulfed in flames.

Belonging to KL Koh Enterprise, the factory manufactures essential oils used in the processing of perfumes and food products.

By midday yesterday, the charred remains of 150 mangled oil drums could be seen strewn across the blackened floors of the factory.

Collapsed ceiling beams and charred roof fragments littered the ground, and the stench of burnt debris and decaying scented oil permeated what remained of the premises.

Factory owner Koh Keng Lye said he was alerted to the fire by the factory alarm fitted at his house. The alarm would alert him to any fire or security violation at the factory.

When he got to the factory, he was only able to look on in shock as Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers battled to put out the fire. His 16 employees were equally shocked when they reported for work at about 9am.

It took 60 SCDF officers around 40 minutes to bring the blaze under control. But mopping up continued for nine hours, and at noon yesterday, firefighters were still busy putting out small pockets of fire within the burnt-out building.

Mr Tay Hock Leng, a liquefied petroleum gas dealer with Shell, said he was driving home around 4am yesterday when ‘the sky suddenly brightened’.

As he got closer to the blaze, Mr Tay said he could hear loud explosions and saw as many as seven balls of flame burst from the burning building.

Police officers evacuated staff from the neighbouring factories and about 150 of them lined the sidewalks of Woodlands Avenue 9 and Gambas Avenue as firefighters fought to control the flames.

‘The heat was so intense that I was afraid to move closer, but the firemen still went ahead. They were very professional and fearless,’ said Mr Tay.

No one was hurt in the incident.

Two adjacent factories, Tan Soon Mui Food Industries and Guan Poh Dim Sum, were also damaged by the fire, and received substantial damage to some of their machinery.

The SCDF is investigating the cause of the fire.

 
Source : Straits Times - 07 jun 2008

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Singapore MM Lee: Why we are investing in Russia

Singapore MM Lee: Why we are investing in Russia 

By Sue-Ann Chia 

MOSCOW - SINGAPORE wants to do business with Russia because it wants to diversify its economic portfolio, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said here yesterday.
By taking part in both ‘oil-rich’ and ‘oil-poor’ emerging economies, the volatility of business risks can be reduced.

‘I’m in favour of spreading our bets because you might have a recession in East Asia, but there might be no recession in Russia or the Middle East because they are oil states and they can survive the recession,’ he said.

‘From a broad strategy point of view, the wider we spread our nets, the better we’ll be able to ride the ups and downs of the market.’

Trade cycles are not synchronised in China, India, the Middle East and Russia, he noted, adding: ‘If you have a downturn there in Asia…you get the upsides here. These are factors that every businessman must take into account.’

The Singapore Government knows the need to hedge its bets on different markets, which was why it was forging closer relations with Russia.

‘If I did not believe we are helping to diversify and to reduce our volatility, I would not have spent the time,’ said MM Lee. ‘This is an extra wing for us, extra dimension for us.’

MM Lee is a regular visitor to Moscow. This trip is his fourth since 2005.

The Government, he said, has made the connections at the top, but it can only intellectually sketch out the economic opportunities.

‘The follow-up must be the businessmen. It is their money, their risks.’

This need for connections, similar to the guanxi built up with the Chinese, was a theme that MM Lee and Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong returned to time and again during yesterday’s media conference wrapping up their four-day trip to Russia.

Also in Russia is a team of about 90 Singapore businessmen led by Singapore Business Federation chairman Stephen Lee.

Businessmen, already constrained by language barrier and distance, also need the right economic partners to navigate the bureaucratic maze in what MM Lee described as ‘terra incognita’.

SM Goh noted that big brand names, like Raffles Hotel which signed a deal yesterday to run the Raffles Moscow hotel in 2011, will have partners seeking them out. But smaller players need help, even with matters like getting their products onto supermarket shelves.

The two leaders, who arrived here on Tuesday, left for Singapore yesterday
 

 
Source : Straits Times - 07 jun 2008

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Time-wasters steer clear of Singapore BTO projects

Time-wasters steer clear of Singapore BTO projects 

HDB’s two new projects still oversubscribed but at half the level seen before change of rules

By Jessica Cheam 
 
IT LOOKS like the time-wasters have got the message after the Housing Board tightened rules for flat applications.
The launch of 1,485 premium flats in Punggol and Sengkang closed on Wednesday with 4,050 applications - still oversubscribed but at about half the level seen before the new rules kicked in.

Some sales launches had become free-for-alls, with thousands of people who had no real intention of buying still lodging applications just to keep options open.

This was evident in the actual take-up rate for flats, which was sharply lower than the number of applicants.

Apart from creating an administrative headache for the HDB, such frivolous applicants also meant deserving buyers were pushed further back in the queue.

Now, a first-timer who twice rejects an offer to buy a flat at a build-to-order (BTO) or balloting sales exercise will lose his first-timer priorities for a year.

In other words, he will be sent to the back of the queue with the second-timers.

The shake-up has certainly made first-time buyers like Ms Lynne Huang, a 25-year-old teacher, more cautious.

‘The new rule is quite harsh, so home buyers like me really have to think twice before applying for any project,’ she said.

‘If I apply, it’s likely that I will buy a unit unless it’s on a very low floor.’

The amended regulations have raised fears that buyers offered leftover flats would be penalised, but the HDB has said it could be flexible if applicants at the back of the queue have good reasons for rejecting available homes.

HDB’s new rules had their first try-out in two new projects - Compassvale Pearl in Sengkang and Punggol Sapphire (below).

They were offered under the BTO system where flats are built once a certain level of demand is reached.

Compassvale Pearl received 977 applications for the 420 flats on offer, and Punggol Sapphire attracted 3,073 bids for 1,065 flats.

That put the ratio of applications to flats at 2.3 in Compassvale Pearl and 2.9 in Punggol Sapphire - roughly half the figure for projects launched earlier this year.

Applications for the Punggol Spring sale in February and Jade Spring @ Yishun Phase 2 in March were about five times the number of flats offered - or five would-be buyers for every home.

Punggol Spring received 2,765 applications for 494 flats, and Jade Spring @ Yishun Phase2 had 2,828 bidders for 576 flats, the HDB told The Straits Times.

Housing experts had anticipated the dip in applications following the rule change, but they still expect the take-up rate to remain strong due to real demand in the market.

PropNex chief executive Mohamed Ismail said buyers are now showing discretion in their applications.

‘But I think the more interesting thing to watch is the actual take-up rate, if demand continues to meet the supply,’ he said.

Mr Colin Tan, head of research and consultancy at Chesterton International, believes there is ‘a lot of pent-up demand’ in the market and it was likely the HDB could even see higher take-up rates from more serious buyers.

In the second half of last year, buyers took up about 54 to 72 per cent of flats in new HDB projects in Punggol, Sengkang and Bukit Panjang.

Unsold stock has reached an all-time low of 1,200 flats - a stark contrast to the 25,000 unsold flats at its peak.

HDB is ramping up supply to about 8,400 units this year - 40 per cent more than last year’s new supply.

Source : Straits Times - 06 jun 2008

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