Mercedes Ruehl

Singapore is studying proposals to shake up its struggling stock market as the gap between the financial hub’s performance and other regional exchanges widens. Singapore Exchange (SGX) is reviewing a document from the nation’s venture and private capital association, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The Singapore Venture & Private Capital Association (SVCA) includes state funds GIC and Temasek, local and global venture firms, and buyout groups including General Atlantic,…

An octogenarian oil trader has been convicted of “cheating” HSBC and abetting forgery after a lengthy trial in Singapore, drawing a line under an oil dealing scandal that left banks facing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential losses. Lim Oon Kuin, the 82-year-old founder of Hin Leong Trading, was found guilty on Friday of two charges of cheating HSBC and one of encouraging a Hin Leong contracts executive to forge a document. A sum of US$111.7mn was involved. Hin Leong, one of the most…

Shortly before Taylor Swift arrived in Singapore in March, the country’s deputy leader, Lawrence Wong, went viral after posting an awkward TikTok video of himself playing her “Love Story” on his guitar. The unassuming US-trained economist will have to get used to the spotlight. On May 15, Singaporeans will wake up to Wong becoming their first new prime minister in 20 years. He will be only the second non-member of the Lee family dynasty to lead the tiny, affluent island city-state of 6mn people.…

Lawrence Wong has been sworn in as Singapore’s new leader, as the city-state charts a new path after decades of rule by the founding Lee family. Wong, 51, is only the fourth prime minister of the Asian financial hub. He succeeds Lee Hsien Loong, who had led the tightly governed island nation since 2004 but announced he was stepping down last month. A US-trained economist who has been deputy prime minister since 2022 and who also serves as finance minister, Wong was sworn in on Wednesday evenin…

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio’s family office has bought two multimillion-dollar “shophouses” in Singapore, as billionaires snap up the heritage properties in the city-state. The Dalio Family Office, which announced it was moving into the Asian financial hub during the coronavirus pandemic, purchased two shophouses on Club Street in 2021 for roughly S$25.5mn (US$18.9mn), according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal. Family offices — private wealth managers set up for ri…

Singapore has convicted the final person in a record S$3bn ($2.23bn) money laundering case that cast uncomfortable scrutiny on the Asian business hub’s embrace of foreign wealth and put pressure on its clean reputation. On Friday, Wang Dehai became the last of 10 Chinese nationals arrested in the case last August to plead guilty and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. The investigation, which was linked to online gambling in Asia, involved island-wide raids and the seizure of gold bars, expe…

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim surprised many when he sought closer ties with China after coming to power in 2022 in an effort to boost his country’s flagging economic growth. But as Chinese Premier Li Qiang visits the south-east Asian country this week, many in Kuala Lumpur wonder whether Beijing is reciprocating those efforts. The two countries will sign a memorandum of understanding on Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and a long-delayed five-year economic co-operation plan during…

Shell has agreed to buy liquefied natural gas trader Pavilion Energy from Singaporean investment fund Temasek, seeing off competition from Saudi Aramco as it seeks to strengthen its grip on the market. The energy major is betting that LNG demand will grow in coming years as China and developing economies rely on it as a transition fuel given it is comparatively cleaner than other fossil fuels. Temasek set up Pavilion Energy in 2013 to tap growing demand for LNG in Asia, injecting an initial $1…

Singaporeans are a competitive bunch. One of the must-know Singlish words for those living in the city-state is kiasu. The Chinese Hokkien term roughly means a fear of missing or losing out and often refers to someone trying to get ahead of others. “Fomo on steroids” is how one Singaporean friend describes it. One of the best places to see this in action is the queues at lunchtime around stalls of the city-state’s favourite hawker food markets. Another area to observe the kiasu mentality in the…

In what were once wild jungle and palm oil plantations in southern Malaysia, the likes of TikTok, Nvidia and Microsoft are racing to install the building blocks of the digital economy: data centres. Billions of dollars are being invested in the state of Johor, just a few kilometres from Singapore, by companies taking advantage of cheaper land and more abundant energy for computer infrastructure while staying close to south-east Asia’s biggest financial centre. Johor’s fortunes may soon be more…