Kasikorn unit ready to act as trustee for REIT next year
Kasikorn Asset Management, the first firm to be granted a trustee licence for real estate investment trusts, is getting ready to forge ahead with the Impact Growth REIT with more than Bt20 billion in capital.
The REIT is to be launched in the first quarter of 2014 after the Securities Exchange Commission ironed out tax issues and gave it the green light. Kasikorn Asset Management executive chairman Chongrak Rattanapian said the firm obtained a licence from the SEC on September 18 to act as a trustee for the REIT fund.
The new REIT will replace a real estate mutual fund that will expire at the end of this year. The advantage of REITs over property mutual funds is a wider range of investments in the property sector, including overseas. Furthermore, some of the fund may be channelled into projects that are still pending.
An REIT allows borrowing of up to 65 per cent of the total assets (in the case where the trust fund received status higher than investment grade), much higher than the 10-per-cent limit of a property mutual fund. Hence the investor can buy more assets to expand the size of the fund, apart from the normal method of increasing capital, Chongrak said.
After establishing the fund, Kasikorn Asset Management hopes to serve as a trustee for the Impact Growth REIT, whose project value is about Bt20 billion.
