In print this week
18 Jan 2019
SINGAPORE (Jan 18): On Tuesday, corporate governance advocate Mak Yuen Teen, an associate professor of accounting at the NUS Business School, released a study arguing that the reputation of the Catalist board has been hurt by recent transfers of underperforming companies from the Mainboard.
In his report, Mak urges the Singapore Exchange to consider disallowing companies from transferring from ...
SINGAPORE (Jan 21): In the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the most severe data breach in Singapore’s history, Ernest Tan, manager at IHiS, the IT arm of the Ministry of Health, revealed he was reluctant to inform his superiors about cyber attack.
Tan, whose job it was to report security incidents and respond accordingly, was worried about the attendant stress and having to work overtime, ...
SINGAPORE (Jan 18): CapitaLand’s acquisition of two subsidiaries of Ascendas-Singbridge (ASB) is a pretty sweet deal for Temasek.
The Singaporean state investment arm is enlarging its stake in CapitaLand – specifically from 40.8% to about 51% – at a time when shares in the integrated property developer are trading at depressed levels.
With the ASB units under its belly, CapitaLand ...
17 Jan 2019
SINGAPORE (Jan 14): Seow Ban Yam, an 82-year-old suffering from cataracts, made headlines last month when the public health insurance scheme MediShield Life paid only $4.50 of his subsidised bill of $4,477, because of claim limits set for his eye operations. The surgical procedures took place at the Singapore National Eye Centre last year. Seow’s case created a furore and, not long after, SNEC ...
16 Jan 2019
SINGAPORE (Jan 14): Not since late 1999 and the first few months of 2000, at the height of tech and dotcom bubble, has there been such a long line-up of tech firms seeking a listing on the stock market. Unlike the heady days at the turn of the century, when even Pets.com made it to the tech-heavy Nasdaq, this year’s list is formidable. If all the tech unicorns, or venture capital (VC)-funded ...
16 Jan 2019
The struggle to win was tough; rebuilding Malaysia will be even tougher
SINGAPORE (Jan 14): I had never been as tense as I was on the night of May 9, which stretched into the morning of May 10. I had led five general elections quite calmly. But not the 14th general election of Malaysia.
The results came slowly. Somehow, the victories of the then government party came first. It seemed to be ...
14 Jan 2019
SINGAPORE (Jan 14): The start of the new school year is usually abuzz with anticipation. And for many pupils, there would have been much preparation even before classes began: reading textbooks and completing assessment books, attending tuition or enrichment classes — the mental gearing-up for what is expected to be a gruelling year ahead.
This year is promising to be different, though. For ...
SINGAPORE (Jan 14): This year marks 200 years since Stamford Raffles landed on an island located between Peninsula Malaysia and Java. Raffles established the free and open port of Singapore by treaty, and since then the island state has flourished into one of the richest economies in the world.
Yet, even as its wealth and success grows, the country’s leaders are faced with pressing ...
SINGAPORE (Jan 11): Immersive technology is increasingly being deployed in various fields other than electronic games and entertainment.
Take medicine for example, where Singapore start-up BetaSight is using virtual reality (VR) headsets to make the diagnosis of glaucoma easier.
Glaucoma is an eye condition in which the optic nerve is damaged as a result of ...
SINGAPORE (Jan 11): Last year, the Straits Times Index lost 10.5%, owing to a range of global and domestic factors. Amid the plunge, many locally listed companies took the opportunity to buy back their own shares.
According to SGX My Gateway, the value of share buybacks more than trebled to $1.53 billion in 2018, from $426 million in 2017. The figure was also higher than the $826 million worth ...