Indiabulls arm to raise $300 Mn in Singapore
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New Delhi: Indiabulls Real Estate plans to raise close to $300 million (Rs1,254 crore) through a mix of private placement and an initial public offering (IPO) of a real estate investment trust in Singapore, said a company official requesting anonymity, reported livemint.com. India's fourth biggest developer by market value, partly owned by Goldman Sachs Group and Merrill Lynch, will sell about 262 million shares in its unit, Indiabulls Properties Investment Trust, the company said in its IPO prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the central bank of Singapore. MAS also supervises the banking, insurance, securities and futures industries. Indiabulls now has six months to sell its shares. "The management is very aggressive," said Manoj Jain, an analyst with brokerage firm Asit C Mehta. "They are saying that there is no slowdown in the Mumbai real estate market whereas the slowdown has started. But, yes, they will face the same problems that any company would in a volatile market," he added. Though the Singapore Exchange had granted Indiabulls eligibility to list on 5 February this year, the company had postponed its plans as the global equity and debt markets were roiled by the credit crisis in the U.S. Even as Indiabulls has gone ahead with its filing, rival property developers such as India's largest developer, DLF, and Unitech, that also had plans of raising money through a real estate investment trust (Reit) listing in Singapore, have chosen to tread carefully and delayed the planned listings. Indiabulls Properties Investment Trust will acquire two properties in Mumbai, One Indiabulls Centre and Elphinstone Mills, both are being developed by the company. The total area of the properties is around 3.5 million square feet. While Indiabulls owns 53 percent stake in the trust, Farallon Capital Partners LP, a San Francisco based hedge fund, owns the rest.

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