Indian property developer Rustomjee plans to build data centres in Mumbai, the nation’s largest real estate market, to ride the artificial intelligence (AI) boom while it continues to sell luxury homes, according to a top executive.

The data centres will be developed across five million square feet of land in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai, where the company holds an “economic interest”, Chandresh Dinesh Mehta, an executive director of Keystone Realtors Ltd, said in an interview.

Rustomjee, the brand of publicly listed Keystone, plans to get a strategic or financial partner for the project, he said. It currently has a residential township in Thane through a partnership that is 49%-owned by Singapore’s Keppel Land Ltd, a unit of Keppel Ltd. 

“We feel that data centres are going to be an asset class, and there is play that is possible,” Mehta said. Thane is “strategically located, where you have fibre connectivity and availability of power”, he added. 

India’s data centre capacity has nearly doubled since 2019, drawing interest from a wide range of investors, according to a report from Avendus Capital. Mumbai alone is expected to add 40% in new capacity in the next five years, the report said. 

Real estate investment trusts and companies that have data centres have seen their share values surge this year as they provide key infrastructure for widespread AI adoption.  

Keystone, which hit a US$1 billion (RM4.34 billion) valuation this year, began in 1995 in the affordable housing segment in Dahisar, a distant suburb of Mumbai. By 2001, its Rustomjee brand had started taking over residential buildings from owners, rebuilding them and constructing more apartments, Mehta said. 

The developer is also betting on appetite for second homes, with the launch of its villa township in Kasara, located about 100km from Mumbai. “Customers want green spaces and homes where they can spend holidays with their family and friends,” Mehta said. 

Given the ageing buildings and “zero supply of open spaces” in Mumbai city and its suburbs, redevelopment will continue to be a focus area for Rustomjee, and it has no plans to invest beyond the city and its surrounding areas. 

“More buildings are discussing redevelopment post Covid, when people were stuck at home and realised homes were not only places to sleep, but to work, study, entertain and spend more time,” Mehta said. 

Last year, Bollywood producer Dinesh Vijan reportedly bought three floors in Rustomjee’s new redevelopment project in the upscale Pali Hill neighbourhood for over one billion rupees (US$12 million or RM51.72 million), according to local media. Mehta declined to comment on the transaction, but said such pricing was not unusual. 

Any real estate purchase of at least 200 million rupees “is not a one-off transaction in Mumbai, unlike in Bangalore or Chennai”, he said. “I have enough headroom in Mumbai.”

Source: Theedgemarkets

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The premium France pays to borrow is the “new normal” as the nation’s finances deteriorate, according to Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco).

The extra yield investors demand to hold French bonds versus German debt is hovering around 70 basis points amid the ongoing political confusion and budget concerns since President Emmanuel Macron held a snap election in June.

The spread reflects “the increased fiscal uncertainty,” Nicola Mai, sovereign credit analyst at Pimco, told Bloomberg TV.

While Macron is expected to name the next prime minister in the coming days, the centrist government that likely emerges will be “weak” and faces “tough” negotiations with the European Commission in the fall, Mai said.

Finding a new head of government is increasingly urgent as France prepares next year’s budget. A caretaker administration has governed since the election in June and investors are watching closely after sending French borrowing costs soaring on concern a new administration won’t control the nation’s large fiscal deficits.

According to research by Bloomberg Economics, the French yield will hold north of 70 basis points through 2024 before widening significantly in 2025. Though borrowing costs will drop as the European Central Bank cuts rates in the coming months, riskier French bond yields won’t decline as much as safer German bonds in 2025, the research predicts.

The spread between French bonds and German debt blew out in June to the widest since the euro-area debt crisis in 2012. The premium was below 50 basis points before Macron called the snap vote.

Despite the challenges faced by France and other European countries managing their debt burden, Mai said he sees a low risk of another sovereign debt crisis in the region.

“The fiscal infrastructure has improved. The ECB has asserted its role as a lender of last resort,” Mai said.

“Nonetheless, I think fiscal dynamics are challenged in several countries apart from Germany. We’ll see a bit of a higher credit spread, including France.”

Source: Theedgemarkets

Ethereum (ETH) has been trending downward against Bitcoin (BTC) in recent days, which has contributed to weakness across the cryptocurrency market. But relief could be on the horizon in the months ahead.

The bad news is that Ethereum is currently facing the lowest point of its price against Bitcoin in the last 1,000 days. That’s a massive blow to everyone invested in Ethereum, especially as multiple upgrades have taken place over the last several years. While Ethereum ETFs have also launched, they have failed to provide strong momentum.

On the bright side, all of the market weakness could be simply due to seasonality — a factor that will soon be working in favor of bulls. In past years, altcoin markets have surged and fallen depending on the season. A prime example is Chainlink (LINK), which generally surges against Bitcoin in the second half of the year while losing value during the first half of the year. It lost more than 60% of its value during the first half of the year in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — and surged more than 120% in the second half of the year in 2022 and 2023.

Chinese liquidity injections are another phenomenon that correlate with the altcoin market. Chinese liquidity expands and slows down on a six-month cycle. Momentum grows during the last part of the year (and in January and February) but slows during the other months. The most recent expansion began in September 2023 and peaked in February. That correlated with the most recent peak in altcoin markets.

Currently, global liquidity is poor. However, there is a high likelihood of the situation improving as China uses quantitative easing (QE) to expand its own economy. The Federal Reserve has also started firing up QE to boost the United States’ economy. The Fed will begin cutting rates in September, which will create a stronger environment for altcoins to do well.

Altcoins are currently showing a beautiful retest against old price levels, and it indicates that there is nothing wrong with the current thesis of the markets. It’s still very comparable to any of these stages that the markets have witnessed in previous cycles. If the markets are brought back to the last stage of 2020, they will be in the same climate, where altcoins are heavily correcting downwards while Bitcoin holds itself steady or continues its momentum upwards.

In that regard, the market capitalization of the altcoin market is still down 50% from its all-time high of 2021. There is still a lot of momentum ahead, and if you compare the action of the overall altcoin market against Bitcoin, you might argue that altcoins have a big breakout on the horizon. They’re showing a massive bullish divergence and a strong higher timeframe support level on which their entire market capitalization rests. 

Let’s face reality: ultimately, people want to generate more Bitcoin through those altcoins, so it makes sense that they’d want to invest in them during this phase of the market.

From a technical point of view, the markets are eager for a reversal upwards. Suppose you add seasonality to this, and you’ll dive into specific market segments with their current valuations. In that case, you’d assess that altcoins are heavily undervalued. An example is AAVE with market capitalization of around $1.8 billion and approximately $12 billion of time value locked in its ecosystem. That is a tremendously low valuation for a project that is building its ecosystem and earning revenue.

The thesis is quite clear: the altcoin surge is ready to happen, and therefore, you should look at potential narratives outside the box, as the most apparent thing rarely happens in the markets.

Source: COINTELEGRAPH