News

Singapore's local bank had no problem raising the $800 million in preference shares. According to a company statement, allocation of the 4.70% non-cumulative, non-convertible, and non-voting preference shares went as follows: the The Public Offer, the Placement and the Reserve Offer accounted for SGD 550 million, SGD 205 million and SGD 45 million respectively of the total Offer size of SGD 800 million.

Hays enumerates tips for employees on how to snag their ideal careers.

More smaller-sized units being transacted in Q3 according to DTZ

Willie Tham, currently the Chief Executive Officer of HSBC in Thailand, will assume the post effective January 2011.

Singapore moved up from 18 to 14 on this year’s list of the world’s most expensive rents, with prime retail rent standing at US$ 473/ sf/annum.

The brokerage has set its STI target to 3,300 citing concerns that the government is likely to continue introducing measures to cool down the property market as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore focusing on limiting growth in unit labour costs via a faster appreciation of the exchange rate.

Singapore was ranked 4th in terms of Grade A rental performance and considered the best in Asia Pacific alongside with Beijing. In the survey conducted by the Jones Land LaSalle on regional office rents, Singapore recorded a quarterly net effective rental growth of 10.9%. This helped increase the Asia Pacific Office Rental index by 1.8% in the third quarter.

Industrial production data for October will be another nail in the coffin on expectation of a technical recession in Singapore, according to DBS analysts. Firstly, we have pointed out even before the 3Q advance estimates that we do not expect a technical recession in 2H10. And last week’s October NODX figure dealt the first blow to all those recession talks. The headline export figure rose by a massive 34.5% (5.8% MoM sa) on account of turnaround in both electronics and pharmaceutical export sales. And what is required right now is an industrial output growth of more than 30% for the month, which will essentially bury all the recession talks. Specifically, a 33.3% YoY expansion has been penciled into our forecast as we expect both key electronics and the biomedical segments to deliver the goods. That will provide some much need growth juice to the overall manufacturing growth and drag the economy from the deep negative end of the growth spectrum back to the positive territory in the final quarter. We expect the economy to grow by about solid 11% QoQ saar in the fourth quarter, up from the record contraction of 18.7% in 3Q10. A turnaround in manufacturing growth will be the crucial tie breaker for that to happen.

Base effect and the pre-emptive monetary tightening by the central bank in April are reasons why inflation is expected to come in at 3.5% YoY, just a tad below the previous month’s reading of 3.7%.

Tenants worried as Grade A office rents shoot up 10/9 % in quarter, the most in Asia, making Singapore the fourth most expensive place in the region to set up shop.

Allows investors to respond earlier to developments outside European trading hours but affecting European equity markets.

With Singapore banks still trading at 1.4xFY11 P/BV, DBS says there is no reason to ignore them, and they are in fact are inexpensive relative to ASEAN peers. 

Although Singapore’s Q3 GDP growth slowed to 10.6% y-o-y and contracted by 18.7% q-o-q SAAR, the bank says the plunge was expected and should not be a cause for concern.

The latest all-property Fair Value Index revealed that while Singapore remains a hot market for investors, Hong Kong is not, moving from hot to cold in Q3.

With prices for Yishun Greenwalk units range from 20% cheaper for 5-room flats to 40% cheaper for the 3-room flats—as compared to HDB’s 3Q10 median resale prices for a Yishun—the real estate agency believes the BTO project will be a hit with first-timers and young couples.

Asian office rents up 3.2% in the third quarter, confirming the recovery of region’s office demand.