Martin Lee @ Sg
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Singapore REITs in the Spotlight

After Teh Hooi Ling wrote her article on the The REIT Myth Busted, there was a lot of debate on online forums both supporting and criticizing her views.

So she came out with another article The Pros and Cons of REITs that calculates the internal rate of return of the various REITs. My guess is that she might have gotten a fair share of hate mail from her original article which was very negative on REITs. 😀

Separately, regular columnist Goh Eng Yeow wrote an article this week warning about credit crunch facing REITs.

Back in 2008, many REITs had to do emergency fund raising from their unit holders as they were unable to refinance their short-term debt. It is a dangerous game that many REITs were playing back then. Having a large proportion of short-term debt and using it to finance a long-term investment.

The Business Times carried an article asking questions about corporate governance of REITs.

This was also something that was bought up in a research paper done by CFA institute which talked about poor governance in Asia-Pacific REITs. You can read about their findings and recommendations in the link below:

Asia-Pacific REITs – Building Trust through Better REIT Governance

Section four of the report provides some interesting case studies. 🙂

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