Singapore Financial News

low ash metallurgical coke for six months from January 1 to June 30, 2025, according to a notification. The government has also imposed quantitative restrictions (QR) on the imports from certain countries, including Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, and the UK.

Element Mustika, a Singapore-based company that brands itself as a “spiritual store.” The ritual promises to reunite estranged couples and help individuals win back their ex-partners through a special “bloodworm love spell.”

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. He’s too young, they said. Too inexperienced.

Kolkata | Mumbai: Family offices of prominent industrialists, private equity funds are considering acquiring a majority stake in the Indian operations of Haier for a little over a billion dollars as the Chinese consumer appliances and electronics major seeks to indigenise its business amid heightened regulatory and bureaucratic scrutiny, people familiar with the matter said.

Delhivery on Tuesday appointed Navneet Kumar and Surajit Das to business leadership positions. Navneet Kumar was appointed to lead Delhivery’s supply chain services division, while Surajit Das was named head of OS1 and its SaaS platform.

Reliance Retail has started a backend test launch of Chinese fast fashion label Shein, starting with its fashion and lifestyle platform Ajio, four-and-a-half years after the Indian government banned the label.

Oil marketing companies (OMCs) weighed down the performance of corporate India in the September quarter. The weak performance of the refining segment, inventory losses and significant LPG under-recoveries contributed to the poor show. The three OMCs—Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum (HP) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC)—reported a combined consolidated net profit of Rs.1,991.1 crore, falling by 92.8% year on year. The impact of OMCs on India Inc.’s overall performance can be assessed by comparing the aggregate PAT growth of all companies in the BSE 500 index and the index’s aggregate PAT growth (excluding OMCs). The data from Reuters-Refinitiv for 498 companies in the BSE 500 index shows a 1.7% y-o-y decline in the aggregate consolidated net profits (not adjusted for extraordinary items). After excluding OMCs, the aggregate net profit growth improves to 5.6% y-o-y. However, after the poor September quarter, the performance is set to improve in the second half of 2024-25. Recent reports from multiple brokerage houses, such as ICICI Securities, Prabhudas Lilladher, Antique Stock Broking, Motilal Oswal, and YES Securities, have been positive on the performance of OMCs.

Aakash Chaudhry, one of India's most successful education entrepreneurs, has secured backing from two of the country's most prominent consumer tech billionaires-Zomato's Deepinder Goyal and Zerodha's Nithin Kamath-for his new venture, Sparkl Edventure, said people in the know. Kamath's Rainmatter, a fintech and sustainability-focused fund, along with Goyal, is participating in a $4 million seed round. The round is expected to attract a few more marquee investors. In October, Chaudhry joined forces with Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani, founders of Meritnation.com, an edtech company acquired by his family business Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL) in 2020, to launch Sparkl. This comes three years after the $950 million cash-and-stock sale of AESL to Byju's in one of India's largest edtech deals till date. Despite the sale, Chaudhry retains an 11% stake in AESL. Sparkl aims to provide bespoke one-on-one online tutoring for students in grades 6 to 12, specializing in International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge curricula. The platform offers personalised classes across subjects such as mathematics, science, languages, business studies etc. With teachers already on board, Sparkl has begun enrolling students from major Indian cities such as Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, as well as Singapore and plans to grow the platform leveraging its tech interventions.

DHL courier delivery scams. In the past few days reports of this scam have surfaced as far as Ireland, Singapore and India. The worst thing about this scam is that fraudsters have managed to copy the style, font, tone, language and even the exact shade of yellow colour used by DHL. Now DHL being a global courier maintains consistency in their public communication, hence this new scam has become widespread.

Swan Energy has signed a preliminary agreement with Singapore’s AG&P Terminals & Logistics to form a joint venture for supplying liquefied natural gas in India and other countries, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday. Swan Energy will hold a 51% stake in the JV and AG&P LNG the remaining. AG&P LNG will also collaborate on Swan Energy’s LNG regasification terminal and will also have an option to take equity stake, the companies said. The companies will also form another JV for a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) and a floating storage unit to operate Swan Energy’s LNG terminal. AG&P LNG will hold 51% stake in this JV with Swan holding the rest.

An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the founder of the bitcoin cryptocurrency has been found to have committed contempt of court by breaching an order of London’s High Court

The Series C funding round valued the company at $2.1 billion and the investment will be used for further global growth strategy, bolttech said in the statement. That is 31.3% higher than the $1.6 billion disclosed in its previous Series B funding round in May 2023.

Apple Inc. is close to getting Indonesia to lift its ban on iPhone 16 sales, after President Prabowo Subianto gave his approval for the government to accept a $1 billion investment from the US tech giant, according to people familiar with the matter. Indonesia warmed to Apple’s proposal after Prabowo was briefed on it over the weekend at a meeting that discussed the tug-of-war between the government and Apple, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing talks that were private. The country prohibited the sale of Apple’s flagship device last month, saying Apple had failed to comply with domestic content requirements for smartphones and tablets. At the meeting, Prabowo greenlit the government to accept Apple’s proposal and urged his cabinet to obtain more investments in future, the people said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It isn’t often that an Indian athlete prevails over a Chinese competitor, but that happened last week in Singapore. Eighteen-year-old Indian grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh became the youngest-ever undisputed world chess champion by defeating 32-year-old Ding Liren of China in the final game of a 14-game championship.

FAAD Capital, a SEBI-registered Category 1 Angel Fund headquartered in Gurugram, on Thursday, announced the launch of its investor network in Dubai, marking the fund’s first international expansion. With this milestone underscores FAAD, aims to support global collaboration and engaging with Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and local investors to drive investments into Indian startups. The inaugural Dubai edition of the FAAD Network Investor Meet was held at the Shangri-La Hotel, and participation from over 100 investors was seen.

Private equity major KKR has acquired a stake in Mumbai-based Rebel Foods, the parent company of Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, and other cloud kitchen brands, according to a company statement. The investment was made through a secondary share purchase transaction and follows Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek-led $210 million (approximately Rs 1,782 crore) funding round announced on December 12. KKR has not disclosed the size of its investment. A significant portion of the latest financing round comprises secondary share sales, conducted at a lower valuation of around $750-800 million. In contrast, the primary funding infusion was executed at a flat valuation of $1.4 billion. While secondaries are typically done at a discount to the last primary valuation, this transaction reflects a steep discount of approximately 50%.

On the face of it, the list of promotions to managing director (MD) which Bank of America has just announced looks like it might have raised a few eyebrows.  The overall MD class of ’24 has 387 members, up 16% on last year.  Within that, Jim DeMare’s global markets operation accounts for 65 new promotions, same as 2023.  But what’s happened to the bankers?

According to a Reuters source, the e-commerce giant is exploring this option in order to facilitate its widely-anticipated float on the London Stock Exchange. Friday Briefing: And the exodus continues? If approved, this would likely mark the first time a company has been permitted to list below the 10% rule. Shein is expected to float with a £50bn market cap next year. Its potential launch on the LSE follows controversies surrounding two cases of child labour that the Singapore-headquartered retailer said it had found in its supply chain back in August. FCA pressed to block S...

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The year 2024 was far from stellar for Indian stocks, particularly in retaining foreign investment. Towards the end of the year, as markets experienced a significant correction, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) began pulling their funds from Indian equities.

To determine the busiest international and domestic flight routes, OAG analyzed the volume of scheduled airline seats from January to December 2024. The routes listed reflect round trip flights rather than one-ways in a single direction. “With the Asia Pacific region very close to a full recovery, the busiest routes are concentrated in the familiar major hubs of Hong Kong, Seoul Incheon and Singapore,” said John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, in a release.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India's chess prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju scripted history on Thursday, outsmarting reigning champion China's Ding Liren to become the youngest world champion after a fortnight-long battle of nerves and knack. As the news poured in from Singapore, marketers had found a new mascot.