I received many requests from our readers to share my takeaways from the latest 2018 Silverlake Axis annual general meeting, so I decided to take some time to pen them down here. This year’s AGM is slightly shorter, and certainly less dramatic, than the annual meeting last year, but I hope my pointers will still give you more insights into Silverlake Axis. Over the last 30 years, Silverlake Axis has built and maintained the core banking systems of banks and financial institutions around the region. Forty percent of the 20 largest banks in Southeast Asia are clients of Silverlake Axis including OCBC, UOB, CIMB, and Maybank who all use the Silverlake Axis Integrated Banking Solution (SIBS). CEO Raymond Kwong shared that the company currently serves 150 banks and financial enterprises with

A year ago, Phillip Capital Management, along with Lion Global Investors, launched the Lion-Phillip S-REIT ETF. The ETF aimed to give investors a way to invest in a diversified basket of Singapore REITs (S-REITs) which paid a steady stream of distributions. (At the moment, the average distribution yield for S-REITs is 6.8%.) The ETF was met with a largely positive response from the market – Lion Global Investors and Phillip Capital Management initially aimed to raise S$40-50 million but exceeded their target when the fund raised over S$100 million last October. Capitalizing on the Singapore market’s appetite for yield, Phillip Capital Management has now launched the Phillip SING Income ETF. The initial offer period for the ETF will close at 11:00 a.m. on 19 October 2018 before its list

Legendary investor Warren Buffett is a huge advocate of companies buying back shares – if done for the right reasons. And that is, if the company’s shares are undervalued, and the reinvestment opportunities for the business are not as appealing. On that note, last month, 35 companies in Singapore’s stock market repurchased 32.4 million shares for a total amount of S$93.6 million, according to a report released by Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68) recently. The September buyback level was 62% lower from August’s buyback amount of S$245 million, which was a 35-month record. In August, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) fell by 3.2% while in September, the index rose 1.4%. Share buybacks tend to increase when the stock market falls, and vice versa. The top four companies wit

One of the exercises in the recent workshop I ran was a simulation exercise to close off Day 1.Workshop participants are invited to form groups to imagine leaving Singapore for greener pastures. As part of the exercise, each group of students will elect a target country. Students will then try to dig out economic data on the target country, make broad estimates on how much it would cost to live in that country and estimate how large a Singapore portfolio should be to generate passive income required to retire there. They will subjectively assess which part of the market cycle the country is in and then they will do some research on what kind of instruments in SGX will allow some proxy bets on that economy. Finally, they will also have to defend an asset allocation in the target economy sho

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is a huge advocate of businesses buying back their shares if the conditions are right. He believes that share repurchases can reveal a thing or two about the company’s management. On that note, let’s check out three companies picked at random that have repurchased their shares so far during the week, as of market open today. Japfa Ltd (SGX: UD2) Japfa is a pan-Asian, industrial agri-food company headquartered in Singapore. On 24 September 2018, the company bought back 300,000 shares at a price range of between S$0.615 and S$0.625 per share. The cost came up to slightly above S$187,000. The agri-food company’s shares have been declining of late, probably due to the weakening of the Indonesian rupiah against the US dollar. Last year, a significant a