Global Markets
20 May 2019
SINGAPORE (May 20): Tensions between Washington and Beijing continue to rise as US President Donald Trump shows no inclination to de-escalate the country’s trade war with China. Trump believes his clash with Chinese President Xi Jinping is boosting his popularity ahead of next year’s election campaign.
Trump is also calling on the US Federal Reserve to cut rates. “China will be ...
15 Mar 2019
SINGAPORE (Mar 15): The private equity (PE) industry in Asia Pacific (APAC) reached new highs in 2018, after a record-breaking 2017, according to the annual Asia Pacific Private Equity Report by Bain & Company.
Now, the region represents 26% of the global PE market, a 9% increase from a decade ago, with $833 billion in total assets under management.
Deal value across the region peaked ...
SINGAPORE (Mar 11): With a steady build-up of public debt becoming increasingly held by private creditors, frontier markets (FMs) are outpacing their emerging market (EMs) counterparts to become more and more vulnerable to global financial shocks.
This is according to Oxford Economics in its latest research briefing issued last Friday, where it noted that FMs are currently “drowning in ...
SINGAPORE (Dec 11): Fitch Solutions has revised its global growth forecast for 2019 downwards by 0.1 percentage point to 3% to accentuate its view that global growth will slow over the coming years after peaking at 3.4% in 2018.
This comes as the primary distributor of Fitch Ratings content revises its growth forecasts downwards for both emerging and developed markets, with Argentina, ...
BALI/INDONESIA (Oct 12): Capital inflows are proving to be just as much a curse as a blessing, with the potential to harm economic growth, Singapore’s deputy prime minister said.
“There’s too much short-term capital flows dictating the future of countries,” Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin at the sidelines of the World Bank and ...
HONG KONG (Sept 13): The Great Crypto Crash of 2018 looks more and more like one for the record books.
As virtual currencies plumbed new depths on Wednesday, the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index extended its collapse from a January high to 80%. The tumble has now surpassed the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 78% peak-to-trough decline after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
Like ...
SINGAPORE (Aug 28): Although near-term activity indicators remain stable, global growth appears to be losing momentum in 2018, compared to 2017 when major regions were accelerating.
Currently, Asia and Europe appear to be slowing, diverging from the US, which is still experiencing strong growth.
In a Schroders TalkingPoint report, chief economist and strategist Keith Wade sees three main ...
SINGAPORE (July 30): Amid rumblings of a potential full-blown trade war, it is important to understand why the current US administration has opted for this path, which in some states in the country is seen as politically attractive.
The US current account deficit in 2017 was US$462 billion ($631.7 billion), the largest in the world. The main cause of this is its US$566 billion trade ...
09 Jul 2018
SINGAPORE (July 9): UK equities had a bad start to the year. By the end of 1Q2018, the FTSE 100 was the worst-performing major European index. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BOAML) survey of fund managers in March called the index the main “big short” of the respondents, as they expected it to continue falling.
While the FTSE 100 recovered in June to levels before the decline, ...
BEIJING (Jul 9): It was hailed as the biggest and most important Chinese technology debut in years. Instead, Xiaomi Corp. begins life as a public company on the defensive, struggling to justify a lofty valuation while buffeted by a geopolitical storm beyond its control.
When billionaire Chairman Lei Jun strikes the gong on Monday in Hong Kong, he will usher onto public markets a company twice ...