Last spring, Sime Darby, a Malaysian conglomerate, announced that it planned to sell noncore assets. It was an attempt to generate cash because much of its Rm16bn debt was coming due quite soon. Like many other companies in Southeast Asia, Sime Darby had ramped up borrowing in the expectation of better economic times that failed to materialise. Its debt swelled from Rm10bn in 2013 to Rm18bn in 2015, while net income dropped by 30 per cent, according to Bloomberg data.
Blackstone’s Asian real estate group, which had been hunting for assets in Singapore and other attractive locations, quickly pounced. It bought three Sime Darby properties in the city state: two malls and a car showroom.
Since then, the pressure on many cash-strapped Asian companies has only worsened. In recent years, groups in a number of emerging markets took on large amounts of debt, often borrowing in US dollars to take advantage of low rates generated by the Federal Reserve’s easing policies. According to a JPMorgan report, the ratio of private non-financial debt to GDP in emerging markets, excluding China, now exceeds the peak level of developed market debt around the time of the global financial crisis: about 175 per cent.