SYDNEY - Australian shopping centre developer Westfield Group has delayed plans to sell more than A$700 million ($805 million) of property in New Zealand and the United Kingdom as it waits for the market to stabilise, the Australian newspaper reported.
The paper quoted Westfield managing director Stephen Lowyas saying the group would delay the sale of the remaining third of its A$1.2 billion British wholesale shopping centre fund, as well as the sale of two New Zealand shopping centres.
"It's probably not the best time to sell something and, given that we're not a forced seller, we decided we will take it off the market and deal with it at another time," Lowy was quoted as saying in relation to the New Zealand centres.
He said the sales were "very much at the margin" for Westfield, which had already raised A$7 billion in the past 12 months to strengthen its balance sheet.
The commercial property sector has been affected by an 80 per cent slump in the shares of Centro Properties Group after it revealed it was having trouble refinancing A$3.9 billion in debt due to the global credit crunch.
