Daily Briefing: Blackstone buys La Quinta resort from GIC; PE firms struggle to fill space for directors

And here's why Malaysian PM Mahathir can't fully reject the high-speed rail project with Singapore.

From Deal Street Asia:

Global private equity firm Blackstone bought luxury property La Quinta Resort & Club and PGA West near Palm Springs, California from GIC for an undisclosed price.

"The acquisition is part of an earlier reported agreement for Blackstone to acquire a portfolio of three high-end resorts from GIC in a mega-deal. Blackstone, which had US$434.1b in assets under management as of its most recent fiscal year, secured more than US$1.1b in debt from JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank early this month to finance the acquisitions. A report by the Desert Sun cited county real estate records to confirm the acquisition by Blackstone that sources said could be worth more than a billion dollars."

Read more here.

From iCompareLoan:

According to iCompareLoan, Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad stopped short of fully rejecting the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur high-speed rail project when he said that they will work out how to reduce the money to give to Singapore if it needs to drop the project.

"'The terms and agreement for the HSR are such that if we decide to drop the project, it would cost us a lot of money. We have entered into an agreement with Singapore. If we break the agreement, we have to pay a very large sum of money,' Dr Mahathir said.

In December 2016, Singapore and Malaysia signed an agreement to build a multi-billion dollar, 350km high-speed rail link between the two countries. The HSR project has been a shot in the arm for developments in and around the Jurong Lake District area. But some have speculated that the election of Dr Mahathir and his coalition is likely to have a dampening effect on developments around the Jurong Lake District area."

Read more here.

From Deal Street Asia:

Private equity (PE) firms in Southeast Asia are struggling to fill the gap of senior-level officers and directors amidst the surge of PE deals in the region, Deal Street Asia revealed in an interview with an executive hiring firm.

"'Vice president or director-level professionals are the hardest to find (for PE). These are one or two level under partner level which is the harder role to find. When bigger funds ask me, I can tell them there are five or ten people in the market but they are not movable as some just moved, some got promoted or some left to start their own funds,' Tily Chu, the Founder and CEO of Singapore-based TC Consulting Asia, told Deal Street Asia in a recent interaction. 

Chu explained that the said senior roles only come from replacement when the firms do not have juniors they would see being promoted to that level."

Read more here.