Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Malaysian Redevelopment and Regeneration of Battersea

Update;
and here's what the PM has to say about Malaysian involvement in the project.

"As one of London's innumerable foreign admirers, it gives me great pleasure to think that my country is helping preserve one of its most distinctive buildings."

This is an excerpt from his speech at t at the groundbreaking ceremony of the iconic Battersea Power Station project, officiated together with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday in southwest London.



Original posting:
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Malaysian investors are backing the redevelopment of the huge Battersea Power Station project that is set to change the landscape of London.

They are SP Setia, Sime Darby and EPF.

A massive project, undoubtedly but the British government is intent on preserving the iconic structures.

"This first phase of the works involves repairs to the external brickwork, wash towers, the steel frame, windows and the replacement of the four chimneys, which will be reconstructed to the highest structural standards ensuring they remain a landmark on the London skyline for generations to come."

That's how it should be.

Our definition of redevelopment when we do redevelopment projects is a world of a difference..
We build mega projects worth megabucks ...like theme park, and theme park..
It's obscene when history and heritage are wiped out.

So at home, not surprising that we have people  keen or bent on destroying the country's heritage...in the name of development? or megabucks??

Also read Rocky Bru here.
Read this, this and this.

The article below is from The Financial Times.

With its iconic white chimneys as the backdrop, the Battersea power station will this week take centre stage as one of London’s biggest regeneration projects of recent times.

Building starts on Thursday of phase one, involving 850 apartments and penthouses, which will form part of a residential and retail complex set to emerge on a 39-acre site, which has sat unused since the power station was idled in 1983.

But while the vast brick structure has been familiar to passing Londoners and tourists, what is less known is that the backers of the project are from Malaysia, a country not usually known for making splashy investments overseas.

The Battersea site was bought 12 months ago for £400m by a three-member consortium from Malaysia, which has said it believes the whole development will be worth £8bn by the time it is completed in 2024.

The Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, is set to officiate at a ground breaking ceremony, with London mayor Boris Johnson, at the site on Thursday.

The two biggest investors are Sime Darby, one of the world’s largest operators of palm oil plantations, and SP Setia, a large Malaysian property developer.

But the third, providing 20 per cent of the funding, is barely a household name in southeast Asia, let alone further afield: the Employees Provident Fund, the largest Malaysian government pension fund by assets.

The EPF traces its origins to a pension fund started in 1951 by the British in what was then Malaya and is now the sixth-largest pension fund in the world with Rm537bn ($169bn) in assets under management.

The EPF has grown to that size thanks to government pension rules that require 11 per cent of all employees’ salaries be channelled into a state pension scheme while a further 13 per cent is paid in by the employer.

This means that millions of Malaysians see the equivalent of a quarter of their salaries pumped into government pension funds every month.

Over time, such inflows have generated huge war chests for the EPF and its smaller rivals Permodalan Nasional Berhad, and Tabung Haji, an Islamic pension fund that helps finance Malaysian muslims’ annual pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

Yet with Kuala Lumpur’s relatively small stock and bond markets, the funds have been forced overseas in the hunt for returns.

That has propelled the EPF and PNB into the London commercial property market, helping turn Malaysia into the sector’s second-largest investor after the US.

“These guys have some of the biggest cheque books in Asia,” said Steve Clayton, senior country officer for JPMorgan in Malaysia.

 “They are in the early stages of searching for and making large cross-border investments. But, as they find more and execute more, their global influence will undoubtedly increase”.

An EPF spokesman said the fund aimed to have 23 per cent of its portfolio invested overseas by 2014/15, up from 18 per cent now.

British government officials said Malaysia’s renewed focus on the UK is matched by an effort the other way in seeking opportunities for British business in the fast-growing markets of southeast Asia.

During a visit to Kuala Lumpur last year British prime minister David Cameron – who is due to meet Mr Najib this week – pledged with his counterpart to double the value of bilateral trade to £8bn by 2016.

Britain’s investments in Malaysia have been growing steadily, if unspectacularly, since vacuum maker Dyson started using Malaysia as its global manufacturing base in 2002.

Tesco, the supermarket operator, has 44 stores in the country and Hamleys, the famed London toy store, opened a branch in Kuala Lumpur last week.

Hugo Swire, minister of state in the Foreign Office responsible for southeast Asia, on a visit to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore last week, said Britain “hadn’t done a very good sales job” in the region in recent years. But that was now changing.

“There’s been a huge increase in the number of ministerial visits. A lot of us are travelling a lot more,” he said.


The article is here.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It stems from arrogance that comes with absolute power.
The problem is that there is no hope of change unless you, rocky, kadir jasin, and other malays who know better become more vocal.
You could start the ball rolling with pnb about their stadium project (which incidentally stemmed from the need to bail out Renong) and then see how much can be done about the land around the national monument.
How about it?
You and the others mentioned are our hope!
Malaysian Jo

Anonymous said...

Mohon jasa baik Azran AAx pertimbangkan dan lulus kertas kerja untuk mohon tambah flight murah ka pulau hainan jadual 3 kali seminggu untu kemudahan untuk kumpulan bekas penduduk malaysia ,yang sekarang mohon kemaustinan luar negara.

Ramai dan termasuk keluarga ta sabar lagi untuk meninggal malaysia, dari Petaling Jaya Utara.Hala pulang untuk membawa 40,000 pekerja untuk bina terowong ke Butterworth.Yang ini tambang murah dan bolih antar invois(terma bayaran : bolih ambil tanah tukar beli) kapada syraikat yang dapat 1 billion kontrak untuk buat metal fabrication terowong

Mohon jasa baik Azran lulus kan cadangan AAX untuk tambah 9 kali seminggu ,platinium klass V untuk pegawai tinggi atasan tengah juga gred rendah dari perbadanan syarikat tabung dan juga belia. ke London Heathrow airport Bolih antar inbois(terma bayaran jumpa ...) kapada Battersbea JV partners , juga Tabung simpanan pekerja, pencen,GLC, Kementerian belia BN, 1M4U outreach, Fedla.Tahniah kapada Tony FFFF, atas pandangan jauh dan dapat maklumat dari bapak sekolah vernakular,yang jamin pembelian AAX 30 kapal pesawat baru akan di isi dengan big biznesssss dari jaringan di atas, juga memudah lawatan berkala ziarah anak yang sedang belajar dan juga 20,000 PATI malaysia

arjuna waspada

changkat lobak.

Anonymous said...

Tak lawak pun. Kalau lawak setakat taraf Rafizi ni gelak lah sendiri je.....

Anonymous said...

Charity Starts at Home!

Here in Malaysia developers are hell bent on destroying anything and everything for the sake of money...

Or is it just for Najib's benefit? So he can boast abt it to the British PM?

Anonymous said...

Malaysian companies look for projects overseas and foreign companies look for projects in Malaysia. They bring back the profits and good for foreign exchange.

Excuse my naivity, but should't the Malaysian companies bid in Malaysia against the foreign companies so that the money doesn't go out? Are there many construction projects that we still need foreign technology these days? We can already build tunnels like the Smart Tunnel.