Shopping Centers Today

MAY 2012

Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)

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WORLD AT A GLANCE European REITs are vulner- able to takeover because their shares are failing to keep up with their asset values, warns Harm Meijer, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase. Those REITs are trading at an average discount of 29 percent to net asset value, he says. The share value of European REITs may rise 14 percent over the next 12 months, he says, and those in the U.K. probably will perform best at 16.5 percent. Elbit's Plaza Centers opened its first Serbia mall, a 60,000-square-meter (roughly 646,000 square feet) mall in the city of Kragujevac that cost some €50 million (about $67 million). Plaza also plans a 70,000-square-meter mixed-use complex and a 45,000-square-meter retail- entertainment center, both in Belgrade, plus a retail park in the southern city of Krusevac. Majid Al Futtaim is searching for land in Abu Dhabi for development of a mall it says could be as big as Dubai's 196,000-square-meter (about 2.1 million square feet) Mirdif City Centre and would probably cost about Dh3 billion (about $800 million). An upscale mall is planned for the West Bay neigh- borhood of Doha, Qatar, adjacent to the recently opened Zig-Zag residential towers. Lagoona Mall will feature a 20,000-square-meter (about 215,000 square feet), European-style piazza with up to 16 fine-dining avenues and outdoor patios. The two-level, 51,000-square- meter mall will house about 160 stores, 15 food-and- beverage outlets and 2,000 parking spaces. Strong confidence in Latin America's econ- omies is fueling a development boom, with some 200 shopping centers set to open over the next two years, said panel- ists this past spring at RECon Latin Amer- ica, in Lima, Peru. In Brazil 62 shop- ping centers are slated to open this year, and an additional 40 per year will be opening for the foresee- able future. Mexico is adding about 50 more this year. Even such developed mall markets as Chile have room for further shopping center growth. Lima, Peru–based Mega Plaza says it will open 10 shopping centers in Peru between now and 2014. 40 SCT / MAY 2012 Singapore-based Real Estate Capital Asia Partners, which specializes in repositioning distressed or underperform- ing real estate, established a S$628 million (about $500 million) property fund for deployment in China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. "In China, property prices are on a downward trend, but there is definitely no bubble," a fund spokesman told the Thai media. "Vietnam has no institutional investors, but they are coming." Westfield Retail Trust plans to in- vest some A$300 million (about $310 million) a year in Australian retail redevelopment, start- ing with one or two projects this year. Westfield reported in February that it ultimately intends to spend about A$1.3 billion in total to redevelop malls. SCT

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