RB Land to sell HQ building stake

RB LAND Holdings Bhd, the property arm of IJM Corp Bhd, plans to sell its 51 per cent stake in Menara Manulife-RB.

The 18-storey building, located along Jalan Gelenggang in Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur, is co-owned with Canadian insurer Manulife Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd.

“There’s intention to sell off the 51 per cent stake in Menara Manulife-RB and Manulife has the first right of refusal,” a source familiar with the situation said.

Another source said that Manulife had made an offer.

“Since Manulife already owns the land, it offered to buy up the 51 per cent stake in the building owned by RB Land. The offer was made about two months ago, but the price was too low,” he said.

“The management is looking at current market prices. Although RB Land owns eight floors of the 18-storey building, it rents out four,” the source added.

The building, formerly known as Menara John Hancock, is valued at about RM62 million, based on Manulife and RB Land’s latest annual reports.

This figure should be higher today as the building was last valued by Manulife in 2005. It was not indicated when RB Land last valued the office block.

Manulife chief executive officer and managing director Peter Don Robertson declined to comment.

However, he told Business Times that the company would be interested to buy the rest of the building if Road Builder wished to sell.

“It would be like any investment we might consider,” he said.

“Real estate is a good asset for our long-term insurance liability. More generally, we will look at big real estate like our own building, Menara Manulife-RB, in Malaysia.”

As at June last year, RB Land, the property arm of Road Builder Holdings Bhd, valued the eight floors of Menara Manulife-RB it owns at RM25.71 million.

The building itself was built by Road Builder about 20 years ago. It ended up with a stake in it as payment for construction work.

A sale makes sense as Road Builder will no longer be using the building as its headquarters after a takeover.

“July 31 will be the last day for Road Builder staff. After that, they will all relocate to Wisma IJM, along Jalan Yong Shook Lin in Petaling Jaya,” the source said.

IJM has bought and privatised Road Builder in an all-share deal worth RM1.56 billion.

While a handful of Road Builder’s key personnel has left for rivals like Gamuda Bhd and WCT Engineering Bhd, the remaining staff will make up IJM’s enlarged workforce of 4,000 workers.