Sun Trust Savings and Loans to raise N20b from capital market

SUN Trust Savings and Loans has floated an offer to raise N20 billion from the public.The subscriptions, which is four hundred million units of N50.000 each in the Sun Trust Real Estate Investment Scheme, was announced at the firm's completion board meeting in Abuja.The Sun Trust Real Estate Investment Scheme (REITS) is a closed-ended unit trust scheme that aims to achieve long term capital appreciation of assets by investing in a portfolio of high-quality real estate and mortgage assets.The fund will be quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.The fund, according to the promoters, seeks to invest up to 90 per cent of its assets in real estate and mortgage related assets and a maximum of 10 per cent will be invested in quality money market instruments.The of Chairman of Sun Trust Savings and Loans, Kenneth Ofili, stressed thatthe REITS was floated with the main aim of taking advantage of the investment opportunities in the real estate and mortgage sector of the Nigerian economy.'Thus, it will provide investors with unprecedented opportunity to gain access to strong return from the thriving real estate market,' he said.Chairman of the board of directors of Lotus Capital Limited, the fund managers, Fola Adeola, stressed the fund had been authorised and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a Real Estate Investment Trust Scheme.Managing Director of Sun Trust Savings and Loans Limited, Muhammed Jibrin, stressed: 'What we are trying to do here today is coming up with an instrument that has been wanted for a long time in the economy for us to get the housing market going. All of us here are aware of the challenges facing the housing sector in the country. It is one of the most underdeveloped sectors in terms of focusing by investors. Everybody knows that the entire economy has lost a lot of money since 2008 financial crisis. We are also aware that we have taken our own bit here in this part of the country. We believe that this is the right time for us to come out with an alternative assets class to provide investors with the opportunity to invest in the real estate sector and at same time give them opportunity of a common stock owner.'REITs are instruments approved by SEC usually that are trust in nature and also provide a big hedge against inflation. We know that there are huge gaps in terms of the housing deficit .We know that the big challenge in setting the housing sector is lack of long term funding that can be invested into the housing sector.
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