AMP Capital acquisitive in Asia

AMP Capital Investors is looking to lift its long-term investment in Asian property to $16 billion and has signalled that a starting point will be a doubling of its industrial property assets in Singapore, according to reports from the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit being held in Singapore this week.

AMP Capital chief investment officer Andrew Bird told the summit that with markets coming off, his company saw a buying opportunity over the next 18 months.

“We see an opportunity to grow our business in this kind of environment, to buy under-priced assets or under-priced businesses,” he said.

Bird said that Singapore and Japan were the company’s top choices for acquisitions as it had staff on the ground conducting research and plans to do the same in China.

“The next place we want to have people on the ground will be China, as long-term that is a very attractive market to us,” he said. “We don’t believe in flying into a place with our cheque books and flying out again with assets. That tends to be a way to lose money.”

On a somewhat less bullish note, Bird told the summit that AMP Capital had scrapped plans to list its Singapore properties through a real estate investment trust due to poor market conditions and volatility and would now be focusing on unlisted wholesale trusts.

Bird also made reference to AMP Capital’s bid for MacarthurCook and said that the company was considering its next steps and would be making an announcement this week.