Some of its properties include Razer SEA HQ, GSK Asia House, Rolls-Royce Solutions Asia, Edward Boustead Centre and AUMOVIO Building phase 1 and 2. The portfolio’s weighted average lease expiry (WALE) stood at 5.8 years, while the WALE for its top 10 tenants stands at 8.4 years. Distribution yield for UI Boustead REIT is expected to be 7.4% for FY2026 and projected to increase further to 7.8% for FY2027, ending March 31. Separately, the likes of DBS Bank, JP Morgan Asset Management (Singapore), Maybank Asset Management, Jumbo Group, Lian Beng Group chair Ong Pang Aik and Boustead Singapore chairman and group CEO Wong Fong Fui, among others, are some of the key cornerstone investors for the REIT.
Singapore’s government and businesses must prepare to handle accelerating risks posed by climate change, according to the country’s environment minister. Challenges to economic and geopolitical stability, including the crisis in the Middle East, are clouding the world’s focus on climate protections and mean there’s a more urgent need to bolster resilience, Singapore’s Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said during a budget debate in parliament. “Major emitters may backslide on their climate obligations as they grapple with the global tensions on security, energy, trade and investments,” Fu said. “In such uncertain times, the environment becomes an inevitable casualty, and our planet will face the impacts of climate change more severely — and sooner.” To avoid larger losses and reassure investors, companies need to do more to assess risks, protect workers and infrastructure, diversify suppliers and insure against climate hazards, she said.
Singapore is cranking up efforts to turn itself into a regional gold hub, tapping local and international banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and UBS Group AG to help boost liquidity and make the most of demand from wealthy investors. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has had meetings with lenders over recent months to assess the potential of the city-state as a physical trading hub, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. They asked not to be named as the plan is not yet public. UBS and JPMorgan are two of the world’s largest market makers for bullion. ICBC Standard Bank, a clearing bank for the London gold market, is also involved, together with Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings, United Overseas Bank, and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, the people said.
Gold has seen a historic bull run over the last year, smashing through records as investors look for alternatives to fiat currencies and for a safe haven in times of geopolitical and trade turmoil. Hong Kong, which has long competed with Singapore to attract liquidity and high net worth investors, is already positioning itself as a leading bullion centre, supported by Beijing’s own ambitions to take a bigger role in the global financial system. All plans are still at an early stage and may change, they said.
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The Singapore Exchange is also assessing industry demand for a new gold contract, according to people familiar with the matter. The bourse suspended its Kilobar Gold Contract in 2018 due to sluggish trading, only four years after its debut. The government abolished a goods and services tax on investment-grade precious metals that also include silver in 2012, but that has not spurred a trading boom.
Singaporeans will likely face higher power bills if a shutdown at Qatar’s giant liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant proves lengthy. The city-state is among countries that rely the most on imported natural gas, with more than 90% of its electricity generated from LNG. Last year, around half of its purchases of the super-chilled fuel were from Qatar, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Singapore takes two to three cargoes a month from the Middle Eastern nation, with most of its imports covered by a long-term contract, said Lu Ming Pang, an analyst at Rystad Energy. It will need to turn to the spot market if it can’t get those shipments, he said. Spot prices in Asia have already more than doubled from last week to the highest since 2023 after Qatar shut the Ras Laffan facility, which accounts for about a fifth of global LNG supply, after being targeted by drone attacks. The city-state will need to compete for a limited amount of gas with buyers elsewhere in Asia and in Europe, where prices are also surging.
NCS is collaborating with South Korea’s Autonomous A2Z to accelerate the development and rollout of trusted autonomous mobility solutions in Singapore. The partnership pairs A2Z’s full-stack autonomous driving platforms and engineering capabilities with NCS’s systems integration, cybersecurity and sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) expertise. NCS will lead the integration of building intelligence into autonomous vehicle deployments and ensure that autonomous systems operate safely, consistently, and within regulatory boundaries. This builds on NCS’s experience in delivering essential systems across public sector and infrastructure domains, where resilience, security and governance are key. The joint roadmap includes piloting and rolling out new solutions, as well as technical knowledge transfer between the two teams. It also includes upgrading selected operational vehicles with autonomous features and improving real-time data visibility for safety and compliance oversight.
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Global
Broadcom Inc CEO Hock Tan said the company expects its AI chip sales to top US$100 billion ($128 billion) next year, marking major inroads into territory dominated by Nvidia Corp. “We have line of sight” to reach this milestone in 2027, he said during a conference call with analysts. “We have also secured the supply chain required to achieve this.” The company projects AI chip revenue to be US$10.7 billion in the current quarter, so reaching the US$100 billion annual pace would be a major jump. The shares gained about 4% in late trading on Tan’s remarks.
According to Bloomberg, Tan has increasingly tried to hitch Broadcom’s fortunes to AI. Though Nvidia remains the biggest maker of accelerators — the chips that help train and run artificial intelligence models — Broadcom has positioned itself as an alternative with its custom-made semiconductors. The company’s AI chip targets include both accelerators and networking chips. Broadcom also delivered a better-than-estimated quarterly outlook on Wednesday and announced a stock buyback plan worth as much as US$10 billion.
China set its most modest growth target in more than three decades, in a tacit acknowledgment that the model powering the country’s rapid rise for four decades is showing strains. The goal — a range of 4.5% to 5% — was in a copy of the government’s annual work report seen by Bloomberg News. It marks the first formal downgrade since 2023 and the least ambitious expansion goal since 1991. While widely anticipated by economists, it carries symbolic weight in a country where growth figures function as political statements as much as economic forecasts. No target was set in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t see his company’s investments in OpenAI reaching US$100 billion ($128 billion) — the maximum amount that the chipmaking giant had once pledged to spend on the startup. “I think the opportunity to invest US$100 billion in OpenAI is probably not in the cards,” Huang said at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco on March 4. He cited OpenAI’s plans to go public, potentially by the end of the year. “So this might be the last time we’ll have the opportunity to invest in a consequential company like this,” Huang said. Nvidia contributed US$30 billion to a massive US$100 billion funding round for OpenAI last month that valued the ChatGPT creator at US$730 billion. While it was the chipmaker’s largest single bet on a startup to date, the investment fell far below the up to US$100 billion in funding that the company was considering as part of a pact with OpenAI in September. The smaller-than-anticipated investment stoked concerns about relations between the leading AI company and the world’s dominant chipmaker. But, as recently as Jan. 31, Huang was describing OpenAI’s work as “incredible” and called the firm “one of the most consequential companies of our time.”
Apple Inc rolled out the US$599 ($764) MacBook Neo in its biggest push yet into low-end laptops, aiming to challenge Windows PCs and Chromebooks for budget-minded shoppers.
The machine is US$400 less than any new-generation laptop Apple has sold before, coming in well below the now US$1,099 MacBook Air. The MacBook Neo will be offered in citrus, silver, indigo and blush colour options, potentially making it appealing both to students and mainstream consumers.
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The financial and logistical troubles the Iran war is causing for the global aviation industry are compounding by the day, with the number of cancelled flights to Middle East hubs surpassing 20,000 since fighting began. Emirates, the world’s largest international airline, extended its suspension of flights to Dubai through the end of Saturday (March 7), a full week since the US and Israel launched their joint attack. Qatar Airways extended its service halts into Friday.
Of the 36,000 scheduled flights to or from the Middle East since Feb 28, more than half have been canceled, analytics firm Cirium said on March 4. That equates to about 4.4 million seats. Thousands of passengers have been stranded in the Gulf region, forcing many to take circuitous, expensive routes to reach functioning airports in Saudi Arabia and Oman.
China will dispatch its special envoy on Middle East affairs to the region to conduct mediation efforts, as the Iran war spreads and rattles regional stability and energy markets.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced the move in separate phone calls on March 4 with his counterparts in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to statements from China’s Foreign Ministry. The exact mission of China’s envoy was not detailed in the statements. The Trump administration hasn’t given any public indication it has prepared to turn to Beijing for mediating the Iran war.
Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez told mining executives and metals traders that Venezuela would move at “Trump speed” to help them unlock the South American nation’s mineral wealth. Rodriguez delivered the assurance to US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and roughly two dozen of the business leaders meeting inside the Miraflores Palace on March 4, according to Bloomberg, citing White House officials familiar with the closed-door talks. She also promised to advance new mining reforms inside Venezuela and told reporters she was asking the national assembly to work diligently on a package that should mirror changes made to the country’s hydrocarbon law earlier this year. Oil and gas industry leaders had championed those policy reforms, casting them as essential to fulfill Trump’s bid to revive Venezuela’s crude production — and now mining interests are seeking similar assurances.
