[SINGAPORE] RB Capital is buying 16 ground-floor riverfronting retail units comprising The Quayside's retail podium for $69 million, BT understands.

The price for the property in the Robertson Quay area works out to around $2,110 per square foot (psf) based on the units' total leaseable area of about 33,000 sq ft.

The property is being sold by an entity controlled by SP Tao's Shing Kwan Pte Ltd. This is believed to be his last major Singapore property investment.

Jones Lang LaSalle is understood to have brokered the transaction through a private treaty deal.

The 16 retail units are part of a mixed development which includes 79 apartments above. The 16 units will give RB Capital a 40 per cent share value in the development which would put it in a key position if there is a collective sale of the property in future.

The Quayside is on a site with a remaining lease of slightly over 80 years.

Mr Tao, who was formerly chairman of Singapore Land, built the development on two adjoining plots adding up to about 61,655 sq ft which he bagged in an Urban Redevelopment Authority tender in August 1993.

The 16 units are fully leased and understood to be generating an average monthly rent of about $6 psf - translating to a net yield of around 3 per cent. The average passing rent is about half the current signing rents for similar units, say market watchers.

Tenants include restaurants such as Red House Seafood, Boomarang, Foodbar DaDa and Aburiya.

In the short term, RB Capital would be looking to spruce up the asset as existing leases expire and reposition it as a food and beverage hub.

Analysts reckon such a strategy should be viable, given the high-spending residents living in the area as well as tourists from the surrounding hotels.

Retail units in The Quayside are allotted 80 car park lots in the basement. Residents from the apartments above have separate carparking facilities on the project's second and third levels.

The Quayside is opposite The Gallery and Studio M hotels. It will also be near RB Capital's 450-room Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay, which is under construction.

RB Capital, set up by Kishin RK, has a portfolio of three hotels with about 1,000 rooms under construction. Besides the Clarke Quay property, the other two are the Holiday Inn Express Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur and a 300-room property above Farrer Park MRT Station which will be managed by the Law family's Park Hotel Group.

The Farrer Park project - comprising the hotel, medical suites and some retail units - is said to have an on-completion value of about $450 million.

Among other properties in RB Capital's portfolio are EFG Bank Building in the High Street area, RB Capital Building in Raffles Place and a 26-storey KL office block, 33 Jalan Sultan Ismail, which houses HSBC.

The group plans to enter the medical suites arena, starting with the inclusion of such units as part of its development above Farrer Park MRT Station.