IPOH: The Perak government has asked Chinese independent schools, Islamic religious schools and the Perak Foundation to settle premium payments for farmland given to them last year to help fund their yearly expenses.

KUALA LUMPUR: Financial institutions should be more open in providing financing to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) venture into green technology infrastructure.

KUALA LUMPUR: HwangDBS Vickers Research has maintained its "buy" call on S P Setia Bhd and increased the target price to RM7.90 from RM5.96.

In a research note on Thursday, Mar 3, HwangDBS said S P Setia was expected to increase its land bank with the coming RM1.1 billion placement and record RM1.8 billion unbilled sales.

KUALA LUMPUR: Hektar Real Estate Investment Trust (Hektar REIT), the owner of three shopping malls, is anticipating to increase its portfolio this year riding on its confidence in financing yield-accretive acquisitions.

Share prices of Sunway Holdings Bhd and Sunway City Bhd (SunCity) have been falling in the market recently, raising the question of whether investors are feeling jittery about the impending merger between the two companies.

SINGAPORE: Singapore is seeing growing interest from Mainland China as the number of Chinese buyers hit a record high of 19% of foreign purchasers in 2010, up from the previous high of 15% in 2009, according to the latest DTZ Singapore Property Times.

In another record high, Chinese buyers accounted for 23% of foreign purchasers in 4Q2010, up from 20% in 3Q2010.

SHANGHAI: Demand for Shanghai grade A office will remain strong this year due to the influx of enterprises from the financial, banking and consulting industries, reported Knight Frank in its latest Shanghai Prime Offices quarterly report.

An annual growth rate of about 10% is projected for the Grade A office market for the year.

S P Setia
Swap for prime Bangsar land

SP SETIA
Investment Highlights

• We maintain our BUY rating on SP Setia Bhd and raise our fair value from RM7.10/share to RM7.38/share – based on an unchanged 5% discount to our revised fully-diluted (FD)
NAV of RM7.77/share.

SEREMBAN: Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan said on Wednesday, March 2 irresponsible people were abusing the RM10 nominal annual quit rent facility for schools and houses of worship in the state.