A-REIT – BT

A-Reit awarded business park site at Fusionopolis

ASCENDAS Real Estate Investment Trust (A-Reit) was officially awarded a business park site at Fusionopolis by JTC Corporation yesterday.

The industrial Reit had put in the top bid of $110 million for the 60-year leasehold site at Fusionopolis – within the one-north research hub – at the close of the state tender on May 20. The 67,300-sq-ft site at Fusionopolis Link has a maximum gross floor area of 269,200 sq ft.

A-Reit is a unit of Ascendas Pte Ltd, which is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of JTC.

The acquisition therefore constitutes an ‘interested person transaction’. But the deal is exempted from the usual constraints as the site was awarded by way of a public tender, said A-Reit.

The trust said that the the strategic location of the site will reinforce A-Reit’s presence and market share within the business & science parks segment while achieving economies of scale in operations.

‘The manager believes that the development of the site will provide unitholders of A-Reit with potentially greater returns compared to outright acquisitions of income-producing properties and thus improve the net asset value of A-Reit’s portfolio as A-Reit will receive any benefit of unrealised valuation gain from the development of the site,’ A-Reit said in a filing to the Singapore Exchange.

‘This property is also in line with the future economic development direction of Singapore to attract further investment from value and knowledge intensive industries.’

A-Reit shares gained one cent to close at $2.01 yesterday.