After a blockbuster deal that realized over a half-billion in profits, Straits Trading’s Chew Gek Khim looks to create more returns through savvy investments. After taking control of one of Singapore’s oldest companies more than a decade ago, Chew Gek Khim, executive chairman of Straits Trading, had a plan: To streamline the firm’s tin business and scattered interests and carve out a forward-looking investment company focused on higher yields in property and hospitality. She restructured and cashed up for new deals, such as buying a 20% stake in Singapore property fund manager ARA Asset Management in 2013. That move is now paying off. The privately held firm has just been sold for $5.2 billion, leaving Chew with a paper gain of S$710 million ($526.5 million). “I’m happy, pleased, vindicated,” says Chew, 60, from her office in Singapore, three weeks after ARA’s acquisition by Hong Kong-listed ESR Cayman was announced in early August. The deal comes with a list of superlatives: ESR will be Asia’s largest real estate fund manager with $129 billion in combined assets under management (AUM)—two times the size of its biggest competitor—and the third-largest real estate asset manager worldwide. It will also be the region’s third-largest property company by market cap, surpassing some of Asia’s oldest developers like Hongkong Land and Wharf Holdings. “By merging the two [companies we] could create like a Blackstone of Asia,” Chew says…. Click below to read the full story from Forbes
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