South Korea’s homegrown mobile app store operator One Store has dropped its plan to go public amid poor stock market conditions, the company said on May 11. One Store’s decision comes a day after a book building of institutional investors wrapped up, in which the offering price of a common share was below its suggested price band, at between 34,300 won ($27) and 41,700 won apiece. The figures have estimated One Store’s equity value at between 910 billion won and 1.1 trillion won. The decision came in contrast with the company officials’ pledge to proceed with the initial public offering…
Author: Asia News Network
Inter cropping fruit and other plants in coffee orchards offers higher and steady incomes for farmers in Vietnam’s Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) region, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Plant Cultivation Department. The country’s largest coffee growing region has more than 163,000ha of fruits and other plants in coffee orchards, or a fourth of the area under coffee. They include mostly durian, avocado, black pepper, cashew and macadamia. The intercropping produces a diverse range of agricultural products, creates jobs, improves farmers’ incomes, reduces the risk of price and demand fluctuations, and stabilises coffee production, according to the…
Activists have condemned alleged terror and intimidation against Papuan human rights activists and called the police to thoroughly investigate an alleged arson attack at Papua Legal Aid Institute (LBH Papua) on May 9. The Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) and Papua Humanitarian Coalition condemned the alleged attack of burning a motorcycle in the garage of the LBH Papua office on Monday morning in Abepura district, Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia. The Papua Humanitarian Coalition, which comprises a number of human rights organisations and activists, including Amnesty International Indonesia, Kontras and Public Virtue Research Institute, called on the police to…
Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan expressed confidence on May 11 that Thailand’s ranking in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report this year would improve to Tier 2. Speaking at a press conference at Government House, Prawit said the government has done a lot to suppress human trafficking and to improve workers’ conditions as suggested in the last US TIP report. As a result, he is confident Thailand would be taken off the Tier 2 Watch List and included in Tier 2 this year. On July 1, 2021, the State Department report downgraded Thailand to the Tier 2…
Competition in the electric vehicle market is intensifying around the world. It is vital for Japanese manufacturers, which have lagged conspicuously behind their rivals overseas, to further strengthen their development and sales strategies to enhance their competitiveness. Honda Motor Co announced in April that it would spend ¥5 trillion ($38.8 billion) over the next 10 years to develop EVs and their software. The automaker intends to start selling 30 EV models by 2030. It also plans to establish a joint venture with Sony Group Corp. and market a jointly developed electric vehicle model in 2025. Toyota Motor Corp has unveiled…
Singapore had another strong year for private equity (PE) deals in 2021 as the rest of Southeast Asia also emerged out of the Covid-19-induced lull in 2020, said a report by global consultant Bain & Co. However, even as the fundamental growth story for Singapore and the region remains intact, some slowdown in PE activity is likely this year amid the worsening market and macroeconomic situation worldwide, according to findings from Bain & Co’s 2022 annual Southeast Asia Private Equity Report, released on May 10. The report surveyed more than 100 PE firms across the Asia-Pacific region. In what the…
Some major businesses from Denmark and Norway have expressed an interest in developing offshore wind power in Vietnam during recent meetings with officials of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. At the 26th UN Conference on Climate Change (COP26) held in the UK last November, Vietnam committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Talking to Danish charge d’affaires Troels Jakobsen and Orsted group executive vice-president and CEO Martin Neubert last week, minister Nguyen Hong Dien said offshore wind power development was highly significant since it could be combined with the realisation of socio-economic growth, energy security, and industrialisation targets…
Cash-rich buyers who have been circumventing Singapore’s additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) regulations by making residential property purchases via trusts that are conditional or revocable may no longer be able to use that loophole. This is after a new regulation kicked in on May 9 that will subject transfers of residential properties into a living trust to an ABSD of 35 per cent. A living trust is created by a person during his lifetime. It is a document where a designated person, the trustee, is responsible for managing that person’s assets for the benefit of the beneficiary. Lee Liat Yeang,…
The improvement in loan application and approval rates in March for home purchases indicates that Malaysia’s property market is well on its way to recovery this year. According to MIDF Research, the data suggested that property demand has rebounded in line with its expectation of a marginally better outlook for new property sales. “We maintain our view that the new property sales outlook is expected to be slightly better in 2022 due to reopening of the economy. “Nevertheless, we think that the property developers may face cost pressure in 2022 due to rising raw material costs,” the research house said.…
The issue of foreign labour dependence is neither new nor unique to Malaysia. When we launched the New Economic Model (NEM) in 2010, it was designed to stir the economy out of the middle-income trap and become a high-income economy. And the NEM pointed out concerns on the dependency of foreign workers that risk slowing down the industrial transformation. And again, the issue of foreign workers emerged in post-Covid-19 economic reform plans, which are to manage and reduce dependence on foreign workers, as they tend to take up jobs from locals. As much as the government wants to reduce dependency…