Property developer Yoma Strategic Holdings has won approval from the Myanmar Investment Commission for a lease extension that will let it redevelop the former headquarters of the Myanmar Railways Company into a five-star hotel, reports Channel News Asia on March 13.
The approval, obtained after protracted negotiations with the authorities, on March 12, drove shares of Singapore-listed Yoma sharply higher amid heavy volume as investors loaded up on stock.
Yoma closed at the day’s high of 44 cents each, a 12.8 percent jump from the previous close, with about 26.5 million shares changing hands, making it the seventh-most-actively-traded stock on Singapore Exchange by volume, according to CNA.
Yoma, through Meeyahta International Hotel, in which it holds an effective interest of 80 percent, and with joint venture partners, plans to develop the entire site - comprising the Grand Meeyahta Hotel and the former railway headquarters built in 1877 - in the heart of downtown Yangon into a mixed-use development, it said in a regulatory filing with Singapore Exchange.
Yoma is run by one of Myanmar’s leading businessmen Serge Pun.