SINGAPORE — An Indian healthcare company is looking to test investor appetite for a
planned initial public offering in Singapore while IGB REIT priced its Malaysia
IPO at the top end of an indicative price range, both deals adding to a string
of big-ticket capital raisings that are making Southeast Asian countries among
the world’s hottest IPO markets this year.
Religare Healthcare Trust, which
is backed by India’s listed hospital chain Fortis Healthcare Ltd., plans to
start gauging investor appetite in a pre-marketing process that begins middle
of next week for its up to S$500 million IPO, people with direct knowledge of the
matter said Thursday.
Singapore and Malaysia are
becoming popular sites for new listings, but in particular Malaysia. Malaysia
is home to some of the world’s largest IPOs this year, with state-backed palm
plantations owner Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd. raising US$3.1 billion in
June and hospital operator IHH Healthcare Bhd.’s $2 billion dual Singapore and
Malaysia listing in July.
Benefiting from a strong
tradition of state investments in public stocks as well as a resilient economy,
Malaysia, last year’s 13th most popular site for new listings, has vaulted to
third place after the U.S. and China thanks to Felda and IHH, according to
Dealogic, beating last year’s top IPO exchange Hong Kong, which has fallen to
fourth place.
Religare’s planned IPO is set to
be the second Singapore listing by an Indian company. In 2009, Indian real
estate-focused Indiabulls Properties Investment Trust raised $165 million from
an IPO ahead of its Singapore listing.
The IPO of Religare also comes
after a failed attempt by another Indian company Reliance Communications Ltd.,
owned by billionaire Anil Ambani, to list a unit in the city-state. Reliance in
July pulled the $1 billion Singapore IPO of a unit that holds its
undersea-cable assets, citing weak market conditions.
Religare will list via a business
trust and aims to list on the Singapore stock exchange in October, the people
said. The company is looking for cornerstone investors to increase the
likelihood of the success of the offering, one of the people said. Cornerstone
investors normally commit to invest prior to the start of sales to
institutional and retail investors.
The business trust listing of
Religare, which has over a dozen hospitals in India as well as overseas assets,
in Singapore would help establish its brand as a regional healthcare provider,
another person familiar with the situation said earlier.
Fortis healthcare, which is
controlled by billionaire brothers Malvinder andShivinder Mohan Singh, declined
to comment while Religare wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Separately, IGB Real Estate
Investment Trust has raised 837.5 million ringgit ($266 million) by pricing the
institutional portion of its initial public offering at MYR1.25 a unit, the top
end of the indicative price range of MYR1.15 and MYR1.25, a person familiar
with the matter said Thursday.
“The strong demand is a
reflection of investor’s hunger for yield and high dividend stocks in an
environment of slow growth and low interest rates and REITs give you that
yield,” said David Ng, who manages more than MYR16 billion in assets as chief
investment officer of Hwang Investment Management Bhd. He declined to say if
his firm had bid for IGB’s units.
The Malaysian property
trust–which owns the Midvalley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur, one of the world’s
largest shopping malls–is scheduled to list in Kuala Lumpur on Sept. 21, and is
expected to have a market capitalization of MYR4.25 billion upon listing.
The institutional part of the
offering comprises 469 million units, while 201 million units have been set
aside for retail investors. The unit of real estate developer IGB Corp. Bhd.
earlier set an indicative price of MYR1.25 for the retail portion.
IGB REIT’s plan follows a similar
offering by Pavilion Real Estate Investment Trust, which raised MYR710 million
in November. CapitaMalls Malaysia Trust, a unit of Singapore’s CapitaLand Ltd.,
raised MYR852 million in 2010.
P.R. Venkat, Prudence Ho and
Jason Ng
Business & Investment Opportunities
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