Elegant Group entity buys The Clementi Mall for $809 million

SINGAPORE – An entity linked to Mr Zhao Zhichao of property firm, The Elegant Group, is said to have inked a deal to buy The Clementi Mall for $809 million from Cuscaden Peak Investments.

This is 8 per cent higher than the indicative guide price of about $750 million for the mall reported by The Business Times in August.

The $809 million price works out to about $4,100 per square foot based on a net lettable area of around 195,772 sq ft; the net yield is about 4.1 per cent based on the net price inclusive of buyer’s stamp duty.

BT understands the entity recently entered into a sale-and-purchase agreement with Cuscaden Peak Investments.

With the purchase of The Clementi Mall, The Elegant Group has built up a portfolio of six suburban Singapore malls since the group’s founding in 2015 – comprising Grantral Mall@MacPherson, Grantral Mall@Clementi, Changi City Point mall, Kinex mall at Geylang and Tanjong Katong Complex, which is undergoing refurbishment.

The group’s latest acquisition, The Clementi Mall, is on a site with a 99-year leasehold tenure that began on Aug 31, 2010, leaving a balance term of close to 84 years. The property is a stone’s throw from The Elegant Group’s Grantral Mall@Clementi, formerly known as CityVibe.

Cushman & Wakefield and Savills, which brokered the sale of The Clementi Mall, conducted an expression-of-interest exercise that drew 12 offers at the initial close of submissions on Oct 3.

Of these, eight parties were shortlisted by Cuscaden Peak Investments to sharpen their pencils and submit their highest offer at the second closing on Oct 17.

Following this, the entity linked to Mr Zhao was picked to do exclusive due diligence with a view to making a purchase.

Cuscaden Peak Investments is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cuscaden Peak, a consortium initially made up of Hotel Properties Limited (HPL), CLA Real Estate Holdings and a Mapletree Investments unit which took over Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) in 2022.

The takeover also resulted in Cuscaden Peak Investments acquiring assets – including The Clementi Mall – held by SPH Reit, which was renamed Paragon Reit.

HPL has since exited the consortium, while

Paragon Reit was privatised in April

and delisted in June.

Since 2023, the group has sold a string of assets it acquired from the SPH takeover.

These include three freehold Nassim Road bungalows for a total of $206.7 million, a student housing portfolio of properties in the United Kingdom and Germany worth £1 billion (S$1.7 billion), as well as The Seletar Mall for $550 million.

THE BUSINESS TIMES