South Africa Ventures
Wong set up an investment base in South Africa under a new Private Equity group with an initial focus trained on Western Cape. He shifted his focus to the African region, despite lacking strong networks unlike those seen in ASEAN and the Far East. His earlier losses in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region had nearly wiped out his entire portfolio. His earlier interest in Africa was held back by the difficulties of geo-political and social events, including the setbacks in Madagascar, the unstable Sudan, the Ain Al-Sukhna project in Egypt, which resulted to the delay in the market entry and subsequent limited presence in the continent
He led an integrated project with equity interest by FirstRand Group in George, a second line city in South Africa's Western Cape. His design firm was subsequently commissioned to design a notable MICE-centric R28 billion urban development project there, better known as Destiny Africa. The project was unveiled by the Premier of Western Cape, Helen Zille on 6 November 2009. Wong maps REIT model with a combination of a hybrid project finance and corporate finance model into real estate development. The developers however chose to sell off the project with largest approved urban bulk instead of developing it.
Wong developed an interest in Boutique Hotel sectors. Much of his initiatives included looking for potential sites regionally in mid-2010. He launched what he called an "integrated global procurement programme" originally seeded into M2C International of Hong Kong, also known as Gloproc. It was originally conceived to serve the "Destiny Africa" project, but after the stagnation of the project, Gloproc was changed to a stand-alone programme in Cape Town. Wong uses Cape Town as a staging point for investment into the southern and central part of continent Africa. He works with the Orientis Venture Capital firm in Cape Town, and supports Cape Town Velodrome redevelopment albeit not having any direct stakes in the project.
Wong also invested into Lormont, a specialty collectible wine company via his Singapore joint-investment holding company, ShyanWest. He holds an equity jointly with Franco van der Weisthuizen. He is also to one of the backers of a new South African diamond investment fund with retail channel potential based in ASEAN.
Read more about this topic: Wong Jeh Shyan
Famous quotes containing the words south africa, south, africa and/or ventures:
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
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