SM Prime Holdings Inc., the country’s leading shopping mall operator and developer, will open today its 42nd shopping mall in the country in Olongapo City.

“The opening of SM City Olongapo is doubly significant for SM Prime as it is the company’s first shopping mall to be opened this year and it is also the first mall in the Zambales province,” said SM Prime president Hans Sy.

SM Prime said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the new mall, situated on a 9,259-square meter lot, had a gross leasable area of 46,869 square meters. About 81 percent of the mall will be occupied by various tenants.

Olongapo City is a highly urbanized area in Zambales. It is right next to the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, a former US naval base that is now a major industrial, tourism and logistics hub.

SM Prime has 42 malls with combined gross floor area of 5 million square meters.

SM Prime is scheduled to open four more malls in the country, namely SM City Lanang in Davao City, SM City in General Santos City, SM City Consolacion in Cebu, and SM City San Fernando in Pampanga.

It is also set to open SM Chongqing in China. SM Prime operates four shopping malls in China, namely SM City Xiamen, SM City Jianjing, SM City Chengdu and the newly opened SM City Suzhou.

Meanwhile, SM Prime confirmed reports that the SM group was in talks to acquire a majority interest in Ortigas Holdings Inc.

“It is not yet known which SM unit or units will take part in the transaction but SM Prime is seen benefitting significantly given the Greenhills landbank,” SM Prime said.

SM Prime in January successfully raised P5 billion worth of notes to finance this year’s capital expenditures.

The company has tapped ING, ANZ and Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. to handle the bond offering.

The shopping mall operator earlier said it would spend P21 billion in capital expenditures this year primarily to build new malls in the Philippines and in China. Jenniffer B. Austria