hey article by Robert Halili, MD of Asia Insider, for BT on Aug 24 Monday.

from Kim Eng report last year:

It started to
diversify into property in the mid-1990s, when it invested heavily in China,
and to-date, this is still not well appreciated by investors. With property
rental income bringing in 70% of profits, the Metro of today is more a
property player than a retailer and should be better valued, in our view. It
has a high quality portfolio of retail and commercial properties in China’s
top-tier cities, strong financials, and extensive retailing experience that
partners (such as Shui On Land, Nan Fung) and property investment
funds HSBC NF and ECM can tap on.

Metro bought back 700,000 shares at around 73 cents. Announcement on Dec 1. Missed it until now...Still, very good sign.

The company certainly believes that its investment properties in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou are worth a lot now and even more so in the future.

As for the retail arm in Singapore - ah, that is a legacy that is not making much $. Will Metro touch $1 soon?

Oi Very Solid Stock - Today, up 2 c at 84 c.

Metro invests in high quality office and retail complexes. Businesses are growing in China, and demand for office space will be strong.

Will hold until at least S$1.

Are METRO and YING LI competitors?

Is this doomsday scenario something we should be wary of? Or is this a very skewed report by Bloomberg? Make your own decision.....

Beijing Seen Vacant for 50% as Chanos Predicts Crash

By Bloomberg News

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Rodman, who has made a career of selling soured property loans from Los Angeles to Tokyo, sees a crash looming in China. He keeps a slide show on his computer of empty office buildings in Beijing, his home since 2002. The tally: 55, with another dozen candidates.

“I took these pictures to try to impress upon these people the massive amount of oversupply,” said Rodman, 63, president of Global Distressed Solutions LLC, which advises private equity and hedge funds on Chinese property and banking. Rodman figures about half of the city’s commercial space is vacant, more than was leased in Germany’s five biggest office markets in 2009.

Beijing’s office vacancy rate of 22.4 percent in the third quarter of last year was the ninth-highest of 103 markets tracked by CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., a real estate broker. Those figures don’t include many buildings about to open, such as the city’s tallest, the 6.6-billion yuan ($966 million) 74- story China World Tower 3.

Empty buildings are sprouting across China as companies with access to some of the $1.4 trillion in new loans last year build skyscrapers. Former Morgan Stanley chief Asia economist Andy Xie and hedge fund manager James Chanos say the country’s property market is in a bubble.

“There’s a monumental property bubble and fixed-asset investment bubble that China has underway right now,” Chanos said in a Jan. 25 Bloomberg Television interview. “And deflating that gently will be difficult at best.”