Daily Briefing: PropertyGuru sues 99.co; SingPost catches the Alibaba effect

And a European REIT launches a $1.5b IPO in Singapore.

From Tech in Asia:

PropertyGuru, Singapore’s largest property classifieds portal in terms of traffic, is suing rival startup 99.co over reproducing content from its website, according to court documents obtained by Tech in Asia.

The next hearing will be held on September 20 in the Singapore Supreme Court.

“In April 2016, we filed a writ of summons against 99.co. The case has been heard in the court since then,” says a PropertyGuru spokesperson. A writ of summons is a court document for starting civil legal proceedings in Singapore.

Read more here.

From Edge Property via Yahoo!:

The REIT is sponsored by Australia’s Cromwell Property Group, an ASX-listed real estate manager which was lately reported to be facing a potential downgrade from Moody’s Investor Service for its high level of debt relative to earnings. Cromwell Property Group also recently entered into new short-term loan facilities to fund its stake in CEREIT.

Citing the term sheet of the deal, International Financing Review (IFR) has indicated that the base offering for CEREIT consists of up to 1.296 billion units in an indicative range of 55-57 euro cents, which is equivalent to a forecast dividend yield of up to 7.7% a year for FY18.

Read more here. 

From The Motley Fool:

Singapore Post is moving away from its traditional postal services to become a logistics and eCommerce services provider. But the change has not come easy.

In the fourth quarter of its fiscal year ended 31 March 2017 (FY16/17), the company took a $185 million impairment on its 2015 acquisition of TradeGlobal. This led to an 87% fall in Singapore Post’s profit for FY16/17. The charge was taken after TradeGlobal failed to meet the company’s growth expectations. Fortunes did not improve in the first quarter of FY17/18. Singapore Post posted a 23.2% decline in operating profits.

But amid the gloomy clouds lies a silver lining.

Read more here.