15 hours ago
Chinese automakers’ need for speed comes with a price
Chinese regulators have taken notice of the drawbacks of short R&D cycles
Business Headlines & Market News
Business Headlines and Stock Market News by Singapore Financial News Publishers
15 hours ago
More Singapore-listed companies tapping digital private-market exchanges
Frankie Ho - After more than a decade in the doldrums, Singapore’s stock market has stirred decisively back to life. From blue chips to mid-caps and even penny stocks, trading activity has surged since the middle of last year, with firmer valuations giving companies greater latitude to raise capital without he ...
15 hours ago
Metro Holdings to revamp department stores as it rules out expansion
Samantha Chiew - Metro Holdings’ roots are in Singapore retail, with the group’s Metro Department Store business once a familiar household name across multiple locations. Today, that legacy retail segment has been scaled back to two department stores in Singapore — Metro Paragon on Orchard Road and Metro Cause ...
15 hours ago
Uni-Asia’s shipping business continues to cruise along steadily amid global uncertainty
Lin Daoyi - Amid escalating global trade disputes, heightened geopolitical tensions, and an uncertain business environment, shipping — the anchor of international trade — is quietly cruising along as it has for centuries. Without much fanfare, the world’s fleet of merchant vessels is still conveying raw m ...
15 hours ago
Malaysia’s economy grows 6.3% y-o-y in Q4, exceeding expectations
Full-year 2025 economic growth was 5.2 per cent
15 hours ago
Malaysia’s economy expands 5.2% in 2025, Q4 growth hits three-year-high
Tan Ai Leng - Bank Negara expects stronger spending, exports and a firmer ringgit to lift growth momentum into 2026
16 hours ago
CapitaLand downplays Mapletree merger rumours; preps second C-REIT IPO and data centre platform
Goola Warden - On Feb 11, during CapitaLand Investment’s (CLI) FY2025 results briefing, Lee Chee Koon, group CEO of CLI, remarked: “I think all of you are here today expecting some announcements. Yesterday, I received a number of WhatsApp messages from friends [and] media analysts.” He was referring to marke ...
16 hours ago
Watch this space: Analysts upbeat on Singapore’s new space agency, but see no near-term lift for stocks
Young Zhan Heng - ST Engineering and local telcos are among the expected potential beneficiaries
16 hours ago
Singaporeans flock to gold despite record-high prices ahead of Chinese New Year
Benicia Tan - Analysts attribute recent spikes in retail demand to wealth preservation seeking rather than festive buying
16 hours ago
NTUC to roll out AI training pathways for workers at all skill levels, subsidy for AI tools
"NTUC must step up and step in to ensure that Singapore's transition into an AI-enabled economy is fair, inclusive and sustainable for all," says labour chief Ng Chee Meng.
16 hours ago
StarHub profit slides 46% as telco transformation struggles against consumer decline
Nurdianah Md Nur - Operating profits as a guide to StarHub’s FY2025 earnings showed how hard it is to reshape a legacy telco while core businesses are still shrinking, even as enterprise services begin to show promise. Net profit attributable to shareholders fell 46% to $86.4 million in 2025 after a $14.1 million pa ...
16 hours ago
NTUC launches AI-Ready SG initiative with tool subsidies, training pathways for workers
Low Youjin - Union members can expect a subsidy of up to 50% to help defray the cost of subscribing to eligible AI tools
16 hours ago
BOJ's Tamura sees good chance of price target being met this spring
TOKYO, Feb 13 : Bank of Japan board member Naoki Tamura said on Friday he sees a good chance of the country durably achieving its 2 per cent inflation target by around spring this year.Tamura said inflation was becoming "endogenous and sticky" with its main driver shifting from high raw ma ...
16 hours ago
Hawkish Bank of Japan policymaker signals rate-hike chance 'this spring'
TOKYO, Feb 13 : Japan is "very close" to durably achieving the central bank's 2 per cent inflation target, hawkish board member Naoki Tamura said on Friday, signaling the chance of an interest rate hike in coming months.Tamura also said current interest rates remain "considerably ...
16 hours ago
Keppel REIT rules out near-term equity fundraising and sets 2026 cost of borrowing targets
Teo Zheng Long - Following a series of acquisitions, including a 75% stake in Top Ryde City Shopping Centre in Sydney and the dilutive deal of an additional one-third interest in Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) Tower 3 in Singapore, Keppel REIT (SGX: K71U ) is likely to focus on organic growth this year. Although ...
16 hours ago
Cnooc to lift offshore wind power capacity by 40% this year
Beijing has pledged to double combined wind and solar capacity by 2035
16 hours ago
CLCT searches for a replacement asset while stabilising portfolio metrics
Teo Zheng Long - With the successful securitisation of CapitaMall Yuhuating in June last year, Capitaland China Trust (SGX: AU8U ) (CLCT) is on a mission to acquire a replacement asset in 2026. During this interim period, the loss of income from CapitaMall Yuhuating was supported by a distribution top-up of 0.33 cen ...
16 hours ago
US details new China limits for clean energy tax credits
The restrictions follow an executive order in July signalling stricter limits for the tax credits
16 hours ago
Toku’s CEO Laboulle: Who says the next enterprise giant can’t come from Singapore?
Julian Wong - Imagine you run a food delivery platform across Southeast Asia. Then a customer in Vietnam complains about a missing order. It sounds simple enough — except Vietnamese regulations require that the conversation data stay within the country’s borders. The platform’s customers in Singapore, Indon ...
16 hours ago
Software Armageddon as AI threat looms
Assif Shameen - If you are befuddled by the recent mayhem on Wall Street, here is a simple explanation: Investors now believe that AI agents like those being developed by start-ups such as Anthropic and OpenAI are ready to supersede and replace enterprise software made by the likes of behemoth Microsoft and its pee ...
17 hours ago
Liquidity trumps fundamentals as Singapore market delivers the best returns in a decade
Lee Ooi Keong - Singapore’s equity market had its best year in more than a decade. The Straits Times Index (STI) rose 22.7% in 2025, delivering a 28.6% total return including dividends, its strongest annual performance in at least a decade, according to FTSE Russell. The iEdge Singapore Next 50 index (NTR) broadl ...
17 hours ago
Investing in the Year of the Fire Horse
Andrew Sheng - On Feb 16, we will say goodbye to the Year of the Wood Snake and hello to the Year of the Fire Horse. The Wood Snake has been a year of ups and downs, beginning with US President Donald Trump’s tariff shock in April. But since then, overall investments worldwide have been good for most investors. ...
17 hours ago
Singapore’s economy is on a roll, but for how long?
Manu Bhaskaran - Last year, Singapore’s economic growth of 5% blew past virtually every single forecaster’s expectations, and that was after a very strong 5.3% expansion in 2024. The government has now upgraded its forecast for this year to a 2%-4% range, up by one full percentage point. It believes that key dri ...
17 hours ago
Days of Being Wild: Will Hong Kong get its mojo back?
Chew Sutat - For the third year in a row since Covid, I made an early-in-the-year trip to Hong Kong to feel its pulse, meet old friends and eat too much. This time round, in between shopping in Mong Kok and Ap Lei Chau, I managed to also attend a concert rehearsal by the Hong Kong Philharmonic featuring renowned ...
17 hours ago
Apac retailers' AI push stumbles on gaps in inventory data
Nurdianah Md Nur - Nearly half of shoppers in Asia Pacific (Apac) now leave stores without buying everything they intended, with 63% blaming out-of-stock items, according to Zebra Technologies’ 18th Annual Global Shopper Study. The problem often begins far from the shelves. In many warehouses, receiving processes re ...
18 hours ago
Waldorf Astoria's Chinese owners plan to sell iconic NYC hotel, WSJ reports
The Chinese owners of the iconic Waldorf Astoria in New York City are preparing to put the luxury hotel up for sale, months after it reopened following a multibillion-dollar overhaul, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (Feb 11).The Park Avenue landmark, reopened in November after an 8-
18 hours ago
Gold and silver rise from near one-week lows on bargain-hunting
Investors now await inflation data due later in the day for more cues on the Fed’s monetary policy path
18 hours ago
Navigating the currents of Indonesia
Chin Meng Tee, Andrew Wong, Frances Cheung & Christopher Wong - On Jan 28, MSCI raised concerns about “investability issues” and data transparency in the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI). The index provider stated that if insufficient progress on transparency is achieved by May, it will reassess Indonesia’s market accessibility, sparking fears of a possible d ...
18 hours ago
Oil set for weekly drop as Iran risks recede, oversupply concerns
BEIJING, Feb 13 : Oil prices were little changed on Friday after falling in the previous session, and are set for their second weekly decline, on receding concerns of an Iranian conflict that could affect supply and on forecasts supply will exceed demand this year.Brent crude oil futures were up 3 c ...
18 hours ago
Oil set for second straight weekly drop as Iran risks recede
Feb 13 : Oil prices slipped on Friday and were on track for a second weekly decline on receding concerns of a U.S.-Iran conflict that could affect supply.Brent crude oil futures were down 6 cents, or 0.1 per cent, at $67.46 a barrel at 0448 GMT after falling 2.7 per cent in the previous session. U.S ...
18 hours ago
Oil prices set for another weekly decline as Iran risks recede
LONDON, Feb 13 : Oil prices edged higher on Friday but were on track for a second weekly decline as concerns receded over the risks of a U.S.-Iran conflict that could affect supply.Brent crude futures gained 29 cents, or 0.4 per cent, to $67.81 a barrel by 0958 GMT after falling 2.7 per cent in the ...
18 hours ago
Global shares retreat from record ahead of US inflation data, tech worries simmer
SYDNEY/LONDON, Feb 13 : Global shares retreated from record highs on Friday ahead of key U.S. inflation data, while worries about shrinking margins for major tech companies and AI disruption fears simmered beneath the surface after a week of selling. The MSCI all-country index slipped 0.2 per cent, ...
18 hours ago
Asian shares step back from record as tech jitters return, bonds rally
SYDNEY, Feb 13 : Asian shares retreated from record highs on Friday as worries about shrinking margins in the tech sector hit the likes of Apple, driving investors into safe-haven bonds ahead of key U.S. inflation data. Overnight on Wall Street, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2 per ce ...
18 hours ago
From Sheng Siong to Keppel DC Reit, here are some potential winners from Budget 2026
Therese Soh - Sectors from essentials to manufacturing, defence, property and energy could be impacted