CAPITALAND CHIEF UPS DIRECT STAKE IN TRUST
CAPITALAND chief executive Liew Mun Leong has raised his direct stake in CapitaLand-managed CapitaMall Trust (CMT).
Mr Liew bought 148,000 units in CMT on Monday at an average price of $3.3736 each. He purchased 94,000 at $3.37 apiece and 54,000 at $3.38 each.
The transaction gave him a direct stake in CMT of 0.0089 per cent of its issued share capital.
He also has a deemed stake of 418,000 units, or 0.0251 per cent of the trust.
Last Thursday, CMT announced it was buying The Atrium@Orchard on Orchard Road for $839.8 million from the Singapore Land Authority.
The following day, CMT made its sharpest drop in almost four months, falling to as low as $3.30, after Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook for the trust from ’stable’ to ‘negative’.
Moody’s cited tighter conditions for borrowing as being one of the challenges faced by Singapore’s real estate investment trusts.
Credit Suisse last week reiterated its ‘outperform’ call on CMT in view of the company’s proposed Orchard Road acquisition. It described the acquisition as strategic in geographic terms, as CMT already owned the adjacent Plaza Singapura.
JPMorgan has also kept its ‘overweight’ call on CMT.
CMT units closed unchanged at $3.27 yesterday. They are down 5.49 per cent this year, compared with a 9.6 per cent decline in the benchmark Straits Times Index.
Source : Straits Times - 29 May 2008
