‘We’re not deal junkies’: CapitaLand Investment CEO says potential M&As must help build long-term capabilities, drive share price
[SINGAPORE] Lee Chee Koon, group chief executive officer of real asset manager CapitaLand Investment (CLI), on Tuesday (Feb 11) said the group is not pursuing merger and acquisition (M&A) opportunities “just for growth”.
This comes amid rumours of a potential merger between CapitaLand and Mapletree Investments.
While not naming Mapletree directly, Lee said any M&A deal “must make strategic sense”.
“If it’s not accretive, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t build long term capabilities that can allow us to drive new funds capabilities (and) drive ROE (return on equity), it’s going to be very difficult for us to stand in front of our investors to explain why we want to do a certain transaction,” Lee said at a briefing accompanying CLI’s full-year results announcement.
“We want to do good deals that really help to build the long-term capabilities for the company that can drive the share price,” he added.
Lee, however, conceded that CLI needs M&A to meet its target of growing its funds under management (FUM) to S$200 billion by 2028.
“In the last 12 months, you see our name appearing in different news, whether it is a platform in Korea, a listed entity in Australia, a listed entity in Hong Kong, a hospitality platform with European origin… not all the news are correct,” Lee said.
“But yes, we are definitely actively looking at deals.”
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