Capitaland Ascott Trust has recently announced an equity fund raising of approximately S$300 million. This includes a private placement at $1.043 for 191.8 million shares and a preferential offering at $1.025 for 100.5 million shares. This corporate action is deemed unpopular by shareholders as seen by the issue prices for private placement and preferential offering at the lower tier of range and tanking of its share price by around 10% to lower than $1.02 as of time of writing. This equity fund raising comes a year after its previous private placement held in Aug 2022 which caused a dilution of shareholdings. About $170.2 million, or 56.1 per cent, of proceeds from the overall fund-raising exercise will go into funding the stapled group’s proposed $530.8 million acquisition of assets from its sponsor, which includes The Cavendish London in Britain. Another $82.8 million, or 27.3 per cent, will be used to finance aplanned extension and renovation of Novotel Sydney Central, its hotel asset in Australia....