INTERVIEW-Hong Kong's Link REIT lives up to recession-proof tag

* pushing ahead with rent rises despite political pressure

* wants to refinance $350 mln of loans in early 2009

* floats idea of acquisitions

By Dominic Whiting

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three years after Link REIT (0823.HK) launched the world's biggest property trust IPO, the package of shopping malls serving Hong Kong's poor seems to be living up to its original billing as recession-proof.

While property trusts across the world slumped from mid-2007, because of debt refinancing concerns and falling asset prices, Link REIT units held steady until they were caught in the mass stock sell-off after the failure of Lehman Brothers in September.

Now, after a 19 percent fall in three months, analysts tout the trust's good value at a 6 percent forecast yield for 2009, especially because many retailers in its malls sell necessities -- rice, toothpaste, frozen Chinese dumplings.

A worry for investors is public pressure to cut rents, to help small shopkeepers as Hong Kong wallows in recession.

This week some politicians proposed the government buy a stake in Link REIT to gain influence at 151 shopping malls that it privatised in a $2.5 billion initial public offering in late 2005.