Following CLI’s investor day, Aussie press carries story on CLI acquiring Wingate
In the course of its investor day on Nov 22, CapitaLand Investment’s (CLI) management mentioned it is looking to expand its company in Australia.
Throughout the course of Nov 22, Lee Chee Koon, group chief executive officer of CLI, said: “For private credit we have actually built our own group and formed a collaboration with teams from Wingate in Australia, originating and underwriting deals and there’s a lot of even more pipeline we can integrate in Australia and Asia-Pacific.”
CLI additionally claimed it is going to invest up to A$ 1 billion ($ 876.7 million) to grow funds under management (FUM) in Australia. In September, CLI finalized its Australian Credit Program (ACP). ACP is CLI’s maiden credit fund at A$ 265 million, backed by Asian clients.
In 2014, CapitaLand unloaded Australand Property Group, which was then snapped up by Frasers Property and has since been relabelled Frasers Property Australia. During the question-and-answer session, Miguel Ko, chairperson of CLI, claimed that the choice to sell Australand and invest more in China was generated even before his time.
At the time, Lim Ming Yan, CapitaLand’s then-president and team CEO, said that the divestment came amidst “beneficial” industry situations. Australand’s share rate also carried out strongly in the past couple of months before the divestment. “This divestment would certainly allow us to reallocate capital to our core businesses in Singapore and China.”
CapitaLand sold off its remaining 39.1% risk in Australand in March 2014 after partially divesting its involvement in November 2013 to strengthen trading assets.
It is useful that on Nov 25, the Australian Financial Review ran a story mentioning that CLI considered to get Wingate.
The business recently disclosed that it had assigned two top hires to newly established roles to reinforce its talent bench and spearhead progress in its target market. Angelo Scasserra will be the chief executive officer of CLI Australia, and Rahul Bharara will be its main investment specialist. They are expected to sign up with the business in 1H2025.
He included that the business “did not have a crystal ball, of course, about China’s situation today” and did not wish to comment on his forerunners’ decisions. At the time, China was growing and CapitaLand had a big competitive advantage. “That could have been a major win or a wrong move. This is not a comment on regardless if my predecessors made an ideal or wrong decision.”
