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The timing is right for measures by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) equities market review group to be implemented, says Ng Kok Song, co-founder and executive chairman of Avanda Investment Management. The decade-old asset management company is one of three firms selected by the central bank and financial regulator to launch fund strategies under the $5 billion Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP).

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How CEO Amy Leong is steering chip tester back to the path of recovery with new customers and diversifying into new areas

In a world where the semiconductor stage has come to boast rockstar Asian-American CEOs like Jensen Huang of Nvidia Corp and Lisa Su of AMD, Amy Leong of AEM Holdings Awx exudes a more reserved image despite being cut from a similar cloth.

Listed F&B operators are heading for the door, while retail REITs are hungry for more. Do investors still have an appetite for the sector?

Breaking from the usual swirl of pastel-coloured cakes, one post on Flor Patisserie’s Instagram page stands out. “Sorry... it’s not a cake post” — a single grey tile, packed with white text, sharply contrasts with the pinks, greens and purples on the local bakery and cake store’s social media feed.

An investor is presented with various options for growing wealth. Some may fully trust themselves by attempting to beat the market through active investing, while others may choose to lie back and passively invest in funds (exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and indices). But what about investing in companies that manage those funds, also known as asset management companies? Some big names in the asset management industry include Blackstone and BlackRock, which have assets worth over US$1 trillion ($1.29 trillion) and US$11 trillion, respectively.

Lee Chee Koon, group CEO of CapitaLand Investment, explains how the real estate fund manager and its investors can grow in tandem, with eyes on a potential China REIT and a listing in India

This year marks the 25th anniversary of CapitaLand Group. Formerly listed as CapitaLand, it underwent a name change on Sept 21, 2021 and morphed into CapitaLand Investment, a real estate investment manager (REIM). CLI is now repositioned into a real asset manager (RAM) with its expansion into private credit.

When CapitaLand split its development business and kept its real asset management (RAM) business listed as CapitaLand Investment (CLI), analysts and market watchers were sceptical about the inclusion of The Ascott. The year was 2021; Singapore was tentatively emerging from its Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. The rest of the world was gingerly moving towards less isolationism. Travel restarted, hotels reopened their doors and occupancy rates were off the lows.

The Trump administration has blinked first, hailing “breakthrough” talks with the UK earlier this month and agreeing to lower tariffs on China last week.

Given US President Donald Trump’s capricious approach to international relations, however, Chinese manufacturers have begun preparing for the next big shift.

Yao Hsiao Tung, chairman of Hi-P International, sees the US-China trade war as an opportunity to grow and hit a $10 billion revenue target, even as it plans to comeback IPO on the SGX

When the universal tariffs were announced by US President Donald Trump, manufacturers across Asia watched with consternation as the trade war that was primarily aimed at China widened. By slapping significant tariffs on other economies such as Vietnam and Thailand, the so-called China+1 strategy of hedging with an alternative manufacturing site was severely undermined.

In 2018, Azalea launched its Astrea bond series for Singaporeans. To date, they have proved to be among the safest investment-grade bonds. They are effectively asset-backed securities. The first of the retail series, the Astrea IV bonds were secured bonds backed by cash flows from a US$1.1 billion portfolio of investments in 36 private equity (PE) funds. They were fully redeemed in 2023.