March 28, 2018 – Sasseur Real Estate Investment Trust made its first appearance on the main board of the Singapore bourse—opening at S$0.8 per unit and raising S$390 million in gross proceeds. As the first outlet mall REIT to be listed in Asia, it secured 12 domestic and overseas cornerstone investors including DBS Bank Limited, Credit Suisse, Bangkok Life Assurance and Haitong Securities at its debut. As the “China-Singapore Mutual Financing Pilot Project”, Sasseur REIT’s IPO has obtained full-fledged attention and support from Singapore Government and Chongqing Municipal Government.
Concurrently but separate from the IPO, Sasseur REIT group has obtained a syndicated loan of S$ 125 million internationally and RMB 1.9 billion domestically.
As the China’s leading outlet mall operator with an overall business area of over 2 million square meters, the group owns nine malls in Chongqing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Hefei, Kunming, Guiyang, Xian and Changchun. With an initial portfolio comprising four malls in Chongqing, Bishan, Hefei and Kunming, the REIT reaches its market cap at US$ 1.5 billion and forecasts an annual return of 7.5%.
As Sausseur REIT’s longstanding legal consultant, Jingtian & Gongcheng has assisted in several financing projects, brought in strategic investors such as L Capital, Ping An Real Estate Company Ltd., Warburg Pincus, etc. as well as helped with the listing of Sausseur REIT Hangzhou on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations.
During the past one and half years prior to the IPO, Jingtian & Gongcheng acted as both the trust administrator’s and issuer’s legal counsel to assist in the trust infrastructure design, the investment portfolio registration, and subsequent application steps. After solving multiple complicated legal matters related to the infrastructure in a real estate trust under Chinese law, the legal firm helped the REIT to land a successful IPO. Additionally, as the borrower’s Chinese legal consultant, Jingtian & Gongcheng fully assisted Sausseur REIT with the project of syndicated loans borrowed domestically and internationally.
