Hyprop Investments and Ellerine Bros, which recently bought the Canal Walk shopping centre outside Cape Town for R1.16 billion, said yesterday they shared commercial interests with the centre's retailers and were committed to cordial landlord-tenant relationships.

While they were willing to discuss matters of mutual concern with any properly constituted tenant association, they believed rental and lease negotiations should be conducted with individual tenants.

Pieter Prinsloo, the chief executive of Hyprop, said: "These negotiations demand focused attention on each retailer's unique business proposition and on the appropriate market factors."

He was responding to Marcel Joubert, the SA Retailers' Council spokesperson, who said it intended asking Nedcor, Hyprop and Ellerine Bros for greater detail on the terms of the deal.

The organisation would seek clarity on the underlying philosophy upon which Hyprop justified the purchase and particularly as to how it related to future conduct towards small retailers.

The council questioned whether the purchase price was predicated on the intention to achieve excessive returns by, for example, increasing rentals of small, independent retailers and "continuing the systematic institutional abuse the mom 'n pops have historically endured".