Ascendas, which manages Singapore’s biggest industrial property trust, said it will start a real estate fund this year to invest in its China projects

Ascendas, which manages Singapore’s biggest industrial property trust, said it will start a real estate fund this year to invest in its China projects as investments increase in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The company has a portfolio of six technology and business parks and more than a dozen commercial properties in cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen, its website showed. Customers in China include Adidas AG, the world’s second-largest sporting-goods maker, and Deutsche Post AG’s DHL Express, it said.

‘China is one of our key markets, so we’re always looking at growth opportunities, which means we will always be in need of capital,’ Chong Siak Ching, Ascendas’ chief executive officer, said in an interview on Wednesday. ‘We’re just looking at the most opportune time to put together some assets’ for a fund.

Ascendas is planning the fund as China’s factory and property investment surged in the first five months of the year. Fixed-asset investment in urban areas rose 25.9 per cent in the first five months from a year ago to 3.2 trillion yuan (S$645 billion), the statistics bureau said on June 15.

Ms Chong declined to specify the amount of the fund. The company, which is a unit of Singapore’s government-owned JTC Corp, wants to double the assets it manages to more than S$10 billion by 2010 as it expands in Asia.

Ascendas said on June 13 it will set up a S$500 million fund to invest in Indian real estate projects. Ascendas manages Ascendas Reit, Singapore’s biggest industrial property trust, through a venture with Macquarie Goodman Group.

Source: The Business Times, 29 June 2007