Taiwan's Omission, Singapore's Shields
Singapore plays defense on the diplomatic front, AI investments pour in, factories hum with activity, and the government takes on algorithmic accountability.
Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.
Hegseth's Roll Call Skips Taipei, Singapore Builds Plan B
Pete Hegseth read out the names of the Indo-Pacific partners stepping up to Washington’s 3.5 percent of GDP defence spending benchmark at the Shangri-La Dialogue on May 30. The list included Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing used the same conference to launch GUIDE, a 17-country plan to protect undersea cables and pipelines. Signatories include the like of Estonia and Latvia to the Philippines and Qatar. Over breakfast on May 31, the five FPDA members re-committed to the 55-year-old pact. Chan said the agreement were "coalitions of the able and willing."
Read more: CNA (GUIDE signatories), CNA (FPDA reaffirmation), Business Times (FPDA attendees), Business Times (Hegseth omission), AsiaOne (Chan AI governance)
AI Money Floods In and Electronics Roar To Life
Singapore's AI bet is starting to pay off on (at least) a couple of fronts. Venture funding got to nearly S$6 billion ($4.5 billion) in 472 deals throughout last year and AI made up nearly a third of the total deal value, which is nearly double its share the year before. AI funding rose 28 percent to $1.4 billion even though the number of transactions fell marginally from 224 to 202, which is probably more selectivity than retreat. April factory output then climbed 17.6 percent year on year, blowing past the 12 percent average forecast from a Bloomberg poll, with the surprise number being electronics up 44 percent on AI-related demand. That’s the quickest pace since mid-2024. Singapore also continued to dominate SEA, taking up almost 75 cents of every dollar of ASEAN-6 deal value. Indonesia was a distant second at ~15%.
Read more: Business Times (fintech breakdown), Business Times (chemicals disruption)
The Bot Broke Is But Who Pays?
IMDA's May 2026 discussion paper, drafted by a working group of more than 20 lawyers in government, academia, and private firms, is one of the first systematic efforts by any government body to try and figure out civil liability over the agentic AI value chain. Model developers, tooling providers, and platform operators are all getting scrutiy. The 36-page paper doesn't hand down any verdicts yet, but it’s interesting to see that moves are being made at the regulatory level about apportioning blame for when things (inevitably) go wrong.
Read more: PPC Land
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One VSIP Per Province
Vietnam’s To Lam spent Saturday in Singapore meeting bigwigs from CapitaLand, Sembcorp, SATS, SEA Limited, Keppel and UOB, collecting expressions of interest for industrial parks, data centres, logistics and finance. The Communist Party General Secretary made it clear that future parks in Vietnam will be expected to be green, smart, and wired into innovation centres and low-emission manufacturing. CapitaLand, with three decades of VN experience, is looking at green housing, smart urban projects, industrial real estate, logistics and green data centres.
Read more: The Investor
Chaos Pays, If You're Big Enough to Survive It
Vitol told banks it pulled in about $2 billion in Q1 profits, after the world's largest independent energy trader entered Q2 nursing losses from the February 28 US-Israel strike on Iran. The strike upended Middle Eastern supply and wrong-footed traders who had bet on falling energy prices. Because traders were able to begin trading into the volatility, Singapore-based Trafigura said it one of its best-ever quarters. Gunvor made more in the quarter than it did in all of 2025. The catch, which can uncomfortably found in Agrocorp's numbers, is that smaller traders that were locked into fixed-price contracts before the conflict simply had to eat the cost increases with few places to hide.
Read more: Business Times
Workers Win the Math and Lose the Raise
Real wages were up 4 percent through 2025, the fastest pace in at least two years, but the heavy lifting was done by a fall in inflation of 0.9 percent, not by employers getting generous. Nominal wage growth slowed to 4.9 percent from 2024’s 5.6 percent, and the share of firms that gave raises dropped to 72.4 percent from 78.3 percent. The Ministry of Manpower is taking it as a win. Administrative and support services led all sectors at 7.5 percent, propped up by Progressive Wage Model floors and Local Qualifying Salary rules. Accommodation cost increase moderated to 3.9 percent from 5.5 percent as the post-pandemic hiring rush is moving into the past.
Read more: Business Times
Ron Sim's Supplements Saga Sours
Singapore's Court of Appeal gave GNC Holdings a clean win on May 25, upholding rights to LAC Global's retail leases and confirming more than $18.9 million in damages against V3 Group (the holding company of Osim founder Ron Sim). The dispute goes back to 2022, when LAC rebranded its 54 GNC franchise stores and tore up the agreements, betting that GNC's own prior contract breaches in Malaysia and Taiwan would release it from the obligation to return the stores. A Pittsburgh tribunal disagreed in 2024, and the Court of Appeal has backed the tribunal. LAC's 64 current outlets are going to have an unclear future now because lease handovers require landlord consent, and the company isn’t yet wiling to say whether stores will be rebranded or even who will run them.
Read more: Business Times
Ascott Cashes Out, Shanghai Cashes In
CapitaLand Ascott Trust is selling the 336-key Robertson House to a mainland Chinese shipping investor for S$360 million ($282 million), close to S$1.1 million per key, at an exit EBITDA yield of 2.3 percent. The Temasek-linked REIT will pocket a handsome S$38.1 million gain and a 4 percent premium to book value. They plan to take net proceeds of S$341.7 million toward higher-yielding plays. The buyer, reportedly a mainland individual with shipping industry ties, is apparently making his or her first bet on Singapore commercial property with the play. After the deal closes in the Q3, CLAS will be down to four lodging assets in the city, including the Somerset Clarke Quay redevelopment inside Canninghill Piers, which is expected to start contributing income in early 2027.
Read more: Mingtiandi
Singtel Lines Up S$1.5 Billion for the AI Bill
Singtel's treasury unit has signed a three-year revolving credit facility of S$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) with 11 banks, including ANZ, Bank of America, ICBC, Standard Chartered, Westpac, HSBC, OCBC and UOB, to help fund a S$3 billion capex plan thorough 2027. Of the total, S$1.2 billion is planned for data centres and “AI.” The group is also shopping a minority stake in its Australian unit Optus.
Read more: Business Times
Bread and Blazers Head North
Gardenia is the latest company to move its production from Singapore to Johor Bahru, laying off 141 workers at its bakery. As previously reported in the Singapore Weekly, H&M is also moving its Southeast Asian headquarters north - in that case to Kuala Lumpur, in a move that will result in the loss of about 80 positions. Gardenia announced the move on May 20, calling it part of an ongoing push for "operational efficiency" in a tougher global environment. H&M's relocation surfaced in Malaysian media earlier in the month. That company didn’t bother to give much in the way of explanation.
Read more: South China Morning Post
The Storm Was Right There on the Radar
Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau published its final report on flight SQ321 last week, two years after the May 2024 disaster left one passenger dead and dozens seriously injured in the skies of Myanmar. The report concludes that the Boeing 777 flew into a developing thunderstorm, not the clear air turbulence initially claimed. The fasten seatbelt sign came on after 11 seconds of light turbulence; pandemonium ensued a further eight seconds later. Richard Woodward, a former Air Force test pilot who flew Qantas jets for more than three decades, reviewed the report and said he thought it pulled punches. "If it'd been another carrier," he said, "I suspect the report might have been a bit more damning of the pilots."
Read more: Nine
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