Philip Chua Business Blog

Posts Tagged ‘region’

IF YOU are betting on the local market today, chances are you will be leaning towards the bears.
After all, with a negative Friday close on Wall Street, a market holiday today in the US and lingering concerns over an overheating property market in China, there seems little reason to hope for a positive session here, or across the region.

The Dow Jones tumbled 100.9 points to 10,609.65 last Frida… more

THE weighting of Asean markets in most global portfolios seems small due to a perceived lack of investment opportunities, low liquidity and weak investor relations in the region, Singapore Exchange chief executive Magnus Bocker said yesterday.
He raised this point from an unnamed study of investor perceptions of regional markets that highlighted the attractiveness of Asean markets at the same time… more

INCREASED foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing economies into emerging markets will shape the political risk insurance industry (PRI), says the World Investment and Political Risk 2009 report released yesterday by the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
This trend could mean that Singapore, from which many investments are made into the region’s emerging m… more

ASIAN bourses were trapped in a narrow range of trading yesterday, with investors adopting a wait-and-see approach as the greenback stabilised against the region’s currencies.
Blue chips did their best to rally – and they did manage to get the benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) up by 13.75 points to 2,758.79 – but other Asian markets were mixed.
China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose by 0.53 per c… more

SINGAPORE may be buzzing amid the arrival of top global leaders for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit but nothing, it seems, can stir the local stock market – and others around the region – from a decidedly lacklustre patch.
Blue-chip stocks around the region stayed trapped within a tight trading range throughout the trading session yesterday.
Even the ailing greenback’s renewed weaknes… more

THE average corporate tax rate in the Asia-Pacific region continues to fall, bucking trends in Europe and Latin America, according to a KPMG survey out yesterday.
However, rate reductions could well be put on hold as governments urgently need to raise tax revenues to fund budgets hit by the global economic crisis.

The survey of corporate and indirect taxes in 116 nations found that many countrie… more

ASIA remains underinsured against natural catastrophes even though the region suffers huge losses from them.
According to data from Munich Re, natural catastrophes triggered global losses of some US$200 billion last year, and Asia had to swallow more than half of that, or US$118 billion.
Insurance covered only US$45 billion of the global losses, and Asia’s share of that was just 5 per cent or US$2… more

SINGAPORE’S stock market defied losses elsewhere in the region yesterday, rising for the fifth straight day on optimism the local economy will turn the corner sooner than expected.
The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) gained 27.96 points – or 1.05 per cent – to 2,680.47, its highest close in more than two weeks.
The five straight days of gains also form the longest winning streak since the week… more

EVEN as the stock markets pick up, expect to see fewer designer labels on fellow passengers on the MRT in coming months, if the latest survey released yesterday by Omnicom Media Group (Asia Pacific) is anything to go by. Singaporeans ranked among the most thrifty in the region, with 45 per cent of respondents planning to be either ‘a little more cautious’ or ‘a lot more cautious’ with spending ove… more

THE global financial crisis has done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of private banking chiefs for Asia, including China and the Middle East.
Banks targeting wealthy individuals are ramping up their hiring while some senior executives from Europe are re-locating to the region to be closer to their new growth centres.
HSBC group private banking chief executive Chris Meares told a conference at the… more