UPDATE: Lend Lease Consortium Preferred Bidder For A$1.4 Billion ING Retail

Lend Lease Corp. (LLC.AU) said Wednesday it is part of a consortium which is the preferred bidder for the A$1.4 billion ING Retail Property Fund.

The fund owns 14 shopping centers in Australia and New Zealand, including Perth's A$450 million Joondalup Shopping City. In recent months the fund has sold three assets: Brisbane's Wynnum Plaza and the Endeavour Hill and Geelong Homemaker centers.

Australia's largest property developer has been on the lookout for distressed assets while property development financing and construction is constrained, and ING Groep NV has said previously that it plans to sell its insurance and investment management businesses to concentrate on banking.

Lend Lease, which had A$1 billion in cash on its books at June 30, will contribute up to around 20% of the capital needed for the deal, with the rest coming from its managed funds and capital partners, Investment Management Chief Tarun Gupta said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

"Some of the assets will come under the management of Lend Lease Retail, and the assets will go into the respective managed funds we have, and become part of our overall platform," Gupta said.

"The assets from our point of view are attractive to our platform. There are some really high quality assets and we believe we can manage them and add value over the long term."

Gupta declined to name the other consortium partners.

The Australian Financial Review and The Australian newspapers reported earlier this month that the ING Retail fund's investors were five pension fund including Singapore's GIC Real Estate, one of that country's sovereign wealth funds, and Prudential PLC.

The acquisition, which is subject to further discussions, may be completed in the next six weeks, Lend Lease said.

Lend Lease said earlier this month that it was in discussions with the fund.

-By Andrew Harrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-3-9292-2095; [e-mail]