Invest Positively

Long before she became the first woman to figure in the top-10 on Forbes “Midas List”of leading venture capital investors this year, GGV Capital’s Jenny Lee cut her teeth as an engineer on Singapore’s fighter jets.

A strategic investor willing to pay a premium is, by most measures, a pretty good way for Olam International to wash off the taint of Muddy Waters. But Olam’s journey through Purgatory may not be an easily repeated trek for other companies hoping to escape their own hostile-short seller hell.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp is taking a 20 per cent stake in Temasek-controlled Olam International in two separate deals totalling some S$1.53 billion, fuelling the consolidation trend in the otherwise moribund agri sector.

The board of Catalist-listed LionGold Corp said the gold miner can operate as a going concern, in response to a Singapore Exchange (SGX) query on external auditor PwC’s disclaimer of opinion on the matter.

At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, as Wall Street slashed jobs, Beijing took advantage of the disarray to poach top Chinese financial talent from overseas to help reform its stock markets. Reuters

Shares in the Pacific Andes stable were sent reeling on Friday by news that the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Republic’s white-collar crime investigation agency Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) are investigating an offence under the Securities and Futures Act (SFA).

An intensifying rivalry between China's two top oil traders Chinaoil and Unipec is whipsawing Asia's oil market, pitting the state-owned firms against each other in a battle for control of the region's crude benchmark.

Even as Noble Group is still nursing its wounds from scathing attacks, including from a short seller, software solutions provider Silverlake Axis has become the fourth company on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in recent history to have become the target of short selling.

Gold miner LionGold Corp said on Friday its independent auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), have issued a disclaimer of opinion for the company’s FY2014/2015 financial statements.

High Park Residences in Sengkang has enjoyed roaring sales in recent weeks, but investors in its smaller units may have trouble leasing them out.

Singapore-based wealth managers, already under pressure from a global move towards tax information sharing, face a more immediate threat as Asian countries including Indonesia and India look to chase undeclared money in the low-tax city state.

Some foreign investors have found a new and simple way to make money from China’s dysfunctional stock markets - by dispensing with market research and playing “follow the leader” instead.

Bankruptcy may be a financial failure, but recent changes to the law show that it need not be regarded as a moral failure also.

Noble Group will hold an investor conference in Singapore today in another bid to fight off attacks over its accounting practices after endorsement from a second auditor failed to convince markets and detractors last week.

China’s currency devaluation is not the end of the matter. And nor its recent stock market mayhem. They are clear symptoms of a deeply troubled world economy, and investors need to wake up to the risk that market jitters will get a lot more serious in coming months.

Former Jade Technologies Holdings director Anthony Soh Guan Cheow, convicted of share rigging and insider trading, has been sentenced to eight years and nine months in jail and fined S$50,000 - the highest sentences imposed for such offences in Singapore to date.

Anthony Soh Guan Cheow, a medical doctor turned businessman, was on Friday (Aug 14) sentenced to 8 years and 9 months’ jail and fined S$50,000 in connection with a failed takeover bid for Jade Technologies Holdings in 2008.

Link

One of the criticisms I’ve heard of the “bankers behaving badly” cliché is that it doesn’t apply to the majority of bankers; it’s just a few bad apples and they typically work in emerging markets.

Hundreds of foreign hedge funds and traders are working in a regulatory grey area in China, using speculative trading strategies that are complicating regulators’ efforts to calm the country’s turbulent stock markets.

A potentially toxic item packaged as an innocuous sounding innovation has appeared on the queue for listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange late on Thursday.

The State Council has finally approved an ambitious – and long-awaited – blueprint to overhaul China’s sclerotic state-owned enterprises in a Singapore-inspired quest for desperately needed new growth, sources close to the decision-making process said.

China Ocean Shipping Group  (Cosco) and China Shipping Group  are planning a merger, in what could be a far more complicated consolidation process than combining the country’s two train makers.

China is considering a merger of China Shipping Group and Cosco Group, its two major shipping companies, amid a broader push to streamline state-owned enterprises, according to people familiar with the matter.

Chinese developer Fantasia Holdings Group has launched a vacation rental business similar to Airbnb and HomeAway to utilise the scores of homes left unsold as a property boom faded.

Jon Carnes of Eos Funds, who once made a fortune betting against Chinese companies, is now so bullish on China stocks that he is predicting that the Shanghai Composite Index will double by the end of 2016.

Tujia.com has raised US$300 million at a valuation of more than US$1 billion, as the Chinese vacation rentals site often compared with Airbnb Inc. pursues financing to bankroll a global expansion.

Four former employees of Phillip Securities who defrauded the brokerage by exploiting a loophole in internal systems escaped jail for their scam last week.