Sunway has been offered a sizeable piece of land in India for a possible township development Petaling Jaya: The enlarged Sunway Bhd, with total assets of RM7 billion and a market capitalisation of over RM3.5 billion, has been offered a sizeable piece of land in India for a possible township development.
Sunway group founder and chairman Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah said the development will be in one of India's "major cities".
He, however, declined to disclose more details because no agreement has been finalised.
"But we are looking at the offer seriously," Cheah told Business Times.
Such offers from foreign property players are not uncommon for Sunway, he said, attributing it to his success in developing a piece of derelict mining land into a thriving township, that is Bandar Sunway.
In a recent interview, Cheah said while India is a country with vast opportunities for the Sunway group, moving forward, it will be Singapore and China that it would like to focus on.
"We expect some 30 to 40 per cent from our bottomline to come from China and Singapore by 2015," he said, adding that despite the size of Singapore, Sunway still finds a lot of opportunities in the island.
"Also in Singapore, we learn a lot because they are technologically advanced in many ways."
While in China, the group has signed a collaboration agreement to participate in the development of Tianjin Eco-City with master developer Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment and Development Co Ltd for a RM5 billion gross development value (GDV) project in Tianjin Binhai New Area.
Sunway was chosen to be the only Malaysian developer with other top regional developers, which include among others Singapore's Keppel Land, Taiwan's Farglory Group and Japan's Mitsui Fudosan.
Cheah said in expanding to the region, the group will continue to identify places with high growth in their population and per capita income, and build strong relationships with local partners.
He said the group will definitely leverage on its bigger and stronger merged group to replicate its success here, overseas.
Sunway Bhd, to be listed on Bursa Malaysia tomorrow, will be one of the largest property-construction players with total assets of RM7 billion and a landbank of 880ha with total gross development value (GDV) of RM25 billion and a market capitalisation of over RM3.5 billion.
Within Bandar Sunway itself, Cheah said the group has at least 32ha more to develop, with the remaining GDV more than RM5 billion.
"We want to be a world-class Asian property-construction group and this merger will be our growth catalyst," he said, adding that the group will be on the lookout to acquire other property companies to enhance its shareholders' value.
