(KUALA LUMPUR) Businessman Syed Mohd Yusof Syed Nasir and his partner, Selangor’s Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, are planning to buy more hotels abroad to expand their business, Malaysia’s Business Times reported.

The duo have already bought the five-star Moose Lodge & Golf Resort, sprawled over 40 hectares in Rotorua, New Zealand, for RM60 million (S$26.4 million), Mr Syed Yusof said in an interview recently.

They are using ISY Holdings Sdn Bhd as the vehicle for the acquisitions.

ISY Holdings is also the developer for the RM1.6 billion six-star Four Seasons hotel and Four Seasons service apartments here.

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It’s part of RM450m Sandakan Harbour Sq integrated project.

(KUALA LUMPUR) @ease boutique hotel, a hotel in Sandakan, Sabah, and owned by Sara-Timur Properties Sdn Bhd, expects to draw an occupancy rate of up to 60 per cent in line with the industry’s average rate.

The hotel, built at a cost of more than RM40 million (S$17.4 million), is part of the Sandakan Harbour Square, a RM450 million integrated, commercial, retail and recreational development project.

At a media briefing on @ease boutique hotel, the operator of the hotel, Value Hospitality Group, said the peak season of tourists in Sandakan would be almost throughout the year from April to December.

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IPO proceeds of $19.1m to be used for Asian expansion.

Malaysian-based, Australian-listed property company United Overseas Australia (UOA) is seeking a secondary listing in Singapore to help it grow in the region.

UOA now focuses on mid to high-end residential and commercial projects in Kuala Lumpur. ‘But we are looking to go into other countries such as China, Vietnam and India,’ director Alan Winduss said yesterday. A Singapore listing will ’spread the word about UOA faster’, he said. ‘We need a base in Asia for faster expansion in the region.’

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Republic is best candidate to help lure other partners: M’sian official.

(SINGAPORE) In the same way a shopping mall needs a big-name store to be its ‘anchor tenant’ so as to help draw in customers for the other stores, Malaysia could be looking for Singapore itself to be ‘anchor tenant’ in its new development zone in Johor.

Dr Ng: There’s synergy to be derived from Singapore’s position as a world financial hub

The suggestion came from Lim Chee Sing, executive director at RHB Research Institute, speaking yesterday at the Malaysia-Singapore Business Forum. He said that the planned Iskandar Development Region (IDR) needed such an anchor tenant to help it take off - and Singapore was the best candidate.

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From the billions of ringgit to be ploughed into Saudi Arabia’s new economic city of Jazan to the establishment of a new hotel and restaurant chain in Mecca, Malaysian companies are beginning to make their mark in the desert kingdom.

Mr Al Khaled: Land in Mecca could cost more than RM1m per sq ft

So significant have these investments been that the small nation has become the fourth largest investor in Saudi Arabia - after the US, European Union, and Japan, according to the Saudi Arabian Government Investment Authority (Sagia).

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(KUALA LUMPUR) A group of Australian and Malaysian firms plan to redevelop a riverside precinct of Kuala Lumpur at a cost of about RM9 billion (S$3.89 billion), the Malaysian Business Times said yesterday.

The urban-regeneration project is backed by Australian bank Macquarie, Australian builder Leighton and two unlisted Malaysian firms, the paper said. Construction is due to begin next month and be completed within eight years, it added.

To be known as Tamansari Riverside Garden City, the project will cover 22.3 hectares, feature a 60-storey tower and comprise commercial and residential properties. The government had awarded the project to local firm ASIE Sdn Bhd in 1998 but the firm needed to wait for residents of existing apartments in the precinct to be relocated, the paper said. — Reuters

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Investors trying to avoid sub-prime crisis may turn to the bourse, he says.

Malaysia’s tendency to not run with the equities pack might not be a bad thing; its relative neutrality plus its other ‘defensive’ qualities could prove a viable alternative to global investors shying away from sub-prime hotspots, a senior minister suggested yesterday.

Bucking the global trend: Last week when regional bourses came back strongly after a Wall Street rally which prompted Hong Kong to jump nearly 8 per cent, Korea 7.5 per cent and Singapore nearly 6 per cent, the benchmark Kuala Lumpur Composite Index responded by inching up a mere 3.2 per cent

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Registered landowners need to feel that their rights are protected.

It’S the sort of story to send shivers down your spine: property owners who suddenly wake up one day to discover they are no longer the registered owners because of fraud.

Only last week, Taiwanese businessman Chen Wei Pin gave landowners in Malaysia another jolt when he found himself the latest in a growing list of victims of forgeries.

In 1990, the businessman/investor had purchased a 17,000 sq ft plot of land located in Kuala Lumpur’s Golden Triangle, leasing it to a car park operator only in recent years. Imagine his shock on finding that his investment - now worth some RM10 million (S$4.3 million) - is no longer registered in his name.

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RM503.6m offer for remaining 118.4m shares in WCT Land.

Malaysia’s civil engineering and construction firm WCT Engineering (WCTE) has made a voluntary takeover offer for the remaining 118.4 million shares of its 64.83 per cent property subsidiary WCT Land (WCTL) for some RM503.6 million (S$216.4 million).

The offer for WCT Land shares is at RM2.09 a share and to be effected on the basis of 0.524 new subdivided shares of WCTE at the issue price of RM3.985 per WCTE share.

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(KUALA LUMPUR) Malaysia’s economy grew at the fastest pace in three years as rising domestic demand and investment countered declining manufactured exports.

South-east Asia’s third-largest economy expanded 6.7 per cent in the third quarter from a year ago, after gaining a revised 5.8 per cent in the second quarter, the central bank said in a statement here yesterday. That topped all estimates in a Bloomberg News survey of 15 economists, where the median prediction was 5.9 per cent.

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