Westfield

Retail property investors are preparing for a wave of shopping centres to hit the market as landlords face a tougher environment with slower spending and traditional anchor department stores coming under pressure. While retail property …

Westfield’s key malls have become so big they had lost “rental tension” with their new owner no longer on the expansion trail, it was revealed in a UBS research note after the investment bank hosted Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s chief financial officer at its global conference.

The Lowy family has severed yet another link with the Westfield shopping centre empire that family patriarch Sir Frank Lowy co-founded in 1960, as his son Steven, the last member of the family to remain on the board of local owner Scentre Group, flagged his intention to step down.

The heavyweight Scentre Group has swooped on a half-stake in Westfield Eastgardens, buying it from the private Terrace Tower Group for $720 million in a deal that defies predictions of a slump in shopping centre values.

French shopping centre giant Unibail-Rodamco’s $30 billion takeover bid for Westfield’s international shopping centre empire has received the green light from federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, as heavyweight offshore fund managers say a rival bid is unlikely to emerge for the Frank Lowy-led mall empire.

Three of the country’s biggest landlords are backing bricks-and-mortar retail with new or overhauled shopping centres to open in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia.

Specialty Fashion Group is believed to have struck a deal with one of its landlords, Scentre Group, after the owner of Australian Westfield-branded shopping malls is said to have agreed to lower the retailer’s rents …

Imagine being able to boast to your mates you own a pub? 

Australian shareholders in Westfield will ­receive a record cash payout of $7.36 billion when the shopping centre empire is taken over by Europe’s Unibail-Rodamco, new data shows.