Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

Singapore Landlords, Take a Bow

Keppel REIT provides a good example of how to squeeze out returns from a difficult market.

October 18, 2016 at 9:00 PM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

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Say you're a landlord whose renters include ANZ, DBS Bank, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, UBS and Barclays, which have together pruned their global workforce by almost 24,000 since early 2012 and are continuing to pare headcount as we speak. A market-weighted index of these top tenants' shares has slumped 22 percent over the same period. How might you be doing?

If you're Keppel REIT, one of Singapore's biggest office-property owners, the answer is, "Very well, thank you." The real-estate investment trust has seen its stock gallop 23 percent in U.S. dollar terms this year, which not only beats each one of its struggling customers but also offers a dramatic contrast to its down-on-luck parent Keppel Corp., the world's biggest builder of oil rigs.