PROPERTY INVESTMENTS SA property coups.

(From Financial Mail)

Byline: Ian Fife

PROPERTY INVESTMENTS SA property coups WHAT IT MEANS Financial institutions have missed out on the property boom Transnet has twice come out on top Carlton Centre Corner House Melrose Arch Canal Walk V& A Waterfront SA's large financial institutions have left property investments to entrepreneurs It's been the decade of the property entrepreneur in SA since the large financial institutions pulled out in the mid-1990s and abandoned the asset class for offshore investment.

Some spectacular coups, five most notably, have been done in that time by smart new entrepreneurs and old hands alike and surprisingly by one struggling parastatal, namely Transnet.

Four of these must go into the hall of fame. The jury's out on the fifth Corner House in the Johannesburg CBD, whose fortunes are closely tied to those of the inner city generally.

Carlton Centre, Johannesburg Transnet CEO Maria Ramos can't really claim what has to be the property coup of the decade as her doing. In June 1999, when Ramos was still director-general at the national treasury, Transnet bought the Carlton Centre for R33m from Anglo American Properties.

Anglo had brought in famed US architect Skidmore Owings & Merrill to design it and it was built in 1973 for close to R50m (about …