The Business Times

Singapore's retail sales up 1.9% in November, slowing from October's phone-boosted pace The picture was mixed across retail industries, with petrol service stations having the highest growth of 21.1 per cent, due mainly…

SPACs and Reits could be bright spots for local IPO activity in 2022, but risks remain Market watchers The Business Times spoke to were optimistic of local equity capital market prospects for this year. The level of acti…

#BTExplains: What you need to know about the ALog Trust-ESR-Reit merger Do you hold units with ESR-Reit and/or Ara Logos Logistics Trust? They've proposed a merger sometime last year, and unitholders will soon be going t…

Collective sale market faces rougher terrain in 2022 In view of the recent property cooling measures, developers need to be more cautious as overpriced sites are unlikely to find buyers amongst new risks faced this year.…

KFC to launch Beyond Meat fried 'chicken' across United States KFC started testing Beyond's plant-based chicken in August 2019 in Atlanta and expanded to more areas the following year. It will from Jan 10 roll out Beyond…

COE premiums fall in most categories at end of first tender of 2022 This buckled earlier predictions that premiums would continue to rise after shooting up at the end of the last year.

[JUST IN]: Closing Vaccinated Travel Lanes will do little to stop or curb the spread of Omicron, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said. He added that rules had already been tightened to contain the Omicron variant. For instan…

[JUST IN]: Family physicians will be allowed to treat mildly symptomatic Covid-19-positive patients through a new protocol previously reserved only for the asymptomatic. GPs will be able to make an immediate diagnosis vi…

[JUST IN]: From Feb 14, an individual's fully-vaccinated status will expire 270 days after the last dose of his or her primary series of vaccinations. It is only after he or she has received his or her booster vaccine do…

BT’s Top Stories from Last Week: 1. Chinese tech giants on talent poaching spree in Singapore bt.sg/JUzT 2. Singapore's GDP to grow 3-5% in 2022, says PM Lee as he outlines reasons for coming GST hike bt.sg/JiEs 3. Nearl…

Crowdfund for badminton world champion Loh Kean Yew draws over S$108,000 in 2 days, more donations pouring in The public online donation campaign has since raised over S$108,000 by 11pm Tuesday (Jan 4), which included a…

Developers to give homebuyers more information, simpler payment schedule among URA's proposed changes URA is looking to revise the Housing Developers Rules, and have put these proposed changes up for public feedback — th…

US CDC reclassifies Covid-19 travel advisory for Singapore to 'unknown' What the US is saying is the level of Covid-19 in Singapore is "unknown", and therefore Americans are not advised to travel here. Singapore is now c…

End of an era for iconic handset BlackBerry on Jan 4, 2022 The classic handsets running BlackBerry's in-house software "will no longer be expected to reliably function" after Tuesday, according to its end-of-life page.

Sharpened focus on sustainability brings opportunities for future growth Keppel's efforts to rejig its portfolio have been evident across the entire group, with changes in each business segment. bt.sg/JNm2

Tencent plans to sell a stake in Singapore's Sea for up to US$3b The Chinese internet giant is offering 14.5 million shares in Sea, a stake of 2.6 per cent, at a discount of as much as 6.9 per cent to Sea's close of US$2…

Kwee's new Nassim luxury project aims at the super wealthy, with an eye on S$6,000 psf The freehold Nassim Quattro, a 4-unit complex in the Nassim enclave, was originally developed for motoring tycoon Peter Kwee's family…

US sets global record of over 1 million daily Covid-19 cases There were 1,080,211 new cases in the country, with the number of cases doubling on the previous week. It comes a day after top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fau…

Beijing meets state air quality standards for first time in 2021 Average PM2.5 particle readings reached 33 micrograms per cubic metre in Beijing over the whole of 2021, down 13 per cent compared to a year earlier and me…

Covid jabs, tests boost demand for medical services at turn of year The Omicron variant, the resumption of travel and the return to the workplace are among factors that have all resulted in continued strong demand for Co…

Capacity, demand for flights to and from Singapore hold up through March 2022 "In the near term, significant pent-up demand for travel, especially during the holiday season, likely meant that bookings were already relati…

#BTOpinion: Can the Reit IPO market rev up to help investors build retirement savings? In today's #TheLevelGround, BT's Leslie Yee examines whether Reits, including new ones coming onboard, could open up more opportuniti…

Malaysia's palm oil sector under pressure amid operational disruptions, yield losses from floods If floods continue, Malaysia’s crude palm oil supply could be disrupted — any impact on Malaysia's palm oil supply will lik…

Singapore firms become slightly better paymasters in Q4: SCCB This after 2 consecutive quarters of deterioration, with all sectors recording a decline in slow payments on a quarter-on-quarter basis. This has been attribu…

Public raises more than S$70,000 for badminton world champion Loh Kean Yew This on a public fundraising page started by Pine Garden managing director Wei Chan, after members of the public approached him expressing keenne…

Chip shortage may turn into oversupply in 2024 for Asian foundries: Morningstar It's predicted that the the shortage will ease after the automotive-related backlog is addressed in the first half of 2022, but despite tren…

Asia, Europe manufacturing grows as Omicron keeps spreading North Asia's export hubs led the recovery as they enjoyed better-than-expected industrial production and robust demand for their tech products. The IHS Markit m…

California's residential market pricey? In 2021, it got even pricier As for home prices overall, they far outpaced the national median price. In October, the median sale price of a single-family home in California was US…

#BTOpinion: Merits of Mapletree merger must be seen through longer-term lens Some Mapletree Commercial Trust unitholders are not pleased about the proposed merger with Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust, which has bee…

Digital banks seen debuting strongly in 2022, but 'long and difficult' path to profitability Industry watchers expect the well-capitalised debutants to compete strongly in Singapore, but turning a profit could take well…