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Peggy Sito

Rise in big deals making headlines  
With the real estate market in Hong Kong and on the mainland on the mend, the number of headline-making property deals has been on the rise.
In Hong Kong, it is rumoured that Neich Tower, a 29-storey office building at 128 Gloucester Road, was sold for HK$668 million. 
The sale and purchase agreement was signed yesterday.
In Beijing, there is talk that JP Morgan has acquired the 23-storey Fraser Suites CBD from Singaporean group Frasers Hospitality Group. 
Neither of the companies was available for comment. 
Frasers Hospitality bought the property from Cosco for US$135 million last year.  
In Shanghai, a deal that made the headlines was news that US investment bank Morgan Stanley is to sell the Exchange office building.  
Now it emerges that the buyer was Beijing developer Soho China and Ah Pak understands that rival developers who missed the deal were hungry for their own slice of the pie.
Shui On directors on shopping spree
Senior management at developer Shui On Land pocketed handsome salaries and bonuses last year and Ah Pak hears they have spent a large slice of their rewards buying 10 million yuan-plus (HK$11.35 million) prestigious addresses in Shanghai where they spend so much of their time.
Happily for Shui On what goes around comes around and when it launched another batch of units in its prestigious Casa Lakeville development (below), three company directors who pocketed those handsome bonuses last year were among the buyers.
Managing director and chief financial officer Daniel Wan Yim-keung, who joined the company four months ago, bought a top floor unit, two other managing directors, Aloysius Lee Tse-sang and Louis Wong Hak-wood, also bought units, and another top manager evidently joined the shopping spree and signed a sale and purchase agreement to buy two adjacent units to turn them into a bigger apartment.
Emoluments disclosed on Shui On's annual report for last year for Mr Lee were 13 million yuan, while 16 million yuan went to Mr Wong.
Sino Land's vertical garden a cool idea
'Vertical greenery' is a way of roping in the benefits of vegetating bare walls in order to try and cool down the rooms they enclose. And bringing some greenery back into the built environment of the city is proving to be a very cool idea, notes Ah Pak.
Simple and cost-effective, vertical gardens ensure constant greenery with a minimum use of floor space.
Another positive is minimum maintenance costs, according to Sino Land executive director Yu Wai-wai, and the developer has adopted the vertical greenery concept in its residential project the Palazzo (above) in Fo Tan. 
Take care, if you want to keep maintenance costs down, to pick the right plants that can survive for the whole year, says Mr Yu.
Now what plants would qualify, Ah Pak wonders? The bauhinia would be a patriotic choice.



Ah Pak