Singapore

Singapore Inc is facing mounting concerns as the city-state’s long-successful oil and gas sector turns sour with the oil price slump, the Financial Times reported. Oil and gas services have been a lucrative niche for the country. It is the world’s biggest maker of jack-up rigs, which are used to drill for oil in shallow ocean waters. But the plunging price of oil, currently hovering around $40 a barrel, has turned this strength into a source of economic pain as rig builders have been forced to slash jobs while smaller oil services providers face bankruptcy.

Mahathir Mohamad has attacked Singapore’s handling of alleged money-laundering linked to Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB. In an interview with the Financial Times, Malaysia’s influential former prime minister accused Singapore of failing to target the protagonists in what is alleged to be a global scheme to siphon off more than $3.5bn from the fund. “Notice that the government of Singapore is very reluctant to pinpoint the people involved in this corruption,” Mr Mahathir said. “It affects Singapore’s reputation as a financial centre. It is not doing the right thing.

Singapore oilfield services company Swiber Holdings Ltd said on Friday it has applied to place itself under judicial management instead of liquidation, Reuters reported. Swiber shocked markets earlier this week by filing for liquidation, as it faced hundreds of million of dollars in debt and a decline in orders, becoming the largest local company to fall victim to the slump in oil prices.

DBS Group Holdings, Singapore's biggest lender, said it expects to recover about half of its total exposure of S$700 million ($517.4 million) to Swiber Holdings Ltd, the oilfield services provider that filed to wind up operations, Reuters reported. DBS said on Thursday that it would tap into its reserves to provide fully for the anticipated shortfall and that it expects the net allowance charge to be lower, at about S$150 million. Swiber filed for liquidation on Wednesday, buckling under millions of dollars of debt to become the latest victim of the slump in oil prices.

Bondholders are suffering as a fishmeal supplier’s bankruptcy filing flags doubts among lenders that it will extract enough value from its assets in Peru to repay creditors, Bloomberg News reported. China Fishery Group Ltd. filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code on June 30, stoking a 10.5 cent drop in its 2019 notes -- set for the worst month since November.

Singapore’s regulator has vowed more “intrusive” inspections of banks over money-laundering after admitting that the scandal surrounding Malaysia’s state investment fund has been a blow to the city-state’s reputation as a financial centre, the Financial Times reported. Banks in Singapore were used to channel money diverted from 1MDB, according to US prosecutors, who allege that more than $3.5bn was siphoned off from the Malaysian state investment fund.

Singapore is seeking to enhance its position as a center for debt restructuring by giving its insolvency law some of the powers of the U.S. bankruptcy code’s chapter 11, just as companies worldwide default on bonds at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported today. The government has “broadly accepted” 17 recommendations submitted by a committee after a yearlong review, the Ministry of Law said in a statement.

Singapore said it would overhaul its system to combat money laundering, weeks after it ordered the local arm of a Swiss bank to shut down operations in relation to a laundering and bribery probe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Monday’s announcement comes as prosecutors in Singapore investigate what they said last month was the city-state’s largest-ever money-laundering investigation, involving embattled Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., known as 1MDB.

Embattled commodity trader Noble Group announced the surprise resignation of CEO Yusuf Alireza on Monday and said it planned to sell a U.S. unit to bolster its balance sheet as it seeks to regain investor confidence, the International New York Times reported. Alireza, a former Goldman Sachs banker had steered Asia's biggest commodity trader to sell assets, cut business lines and take big writedowns as it battled weak commodity markets and the fallout from an accounting dispute. "With this transformation process now largely complete, Mr.

Chinese banks are justifiably on investors' radar for shuffling some of their more wobbly credit risk into wealth management products. However, when it comes to misery camped off balance sheet, the People's Republic has company elsewhere in Asia: More than 11 percent of the bad assets reported by Singapore's largest lender aren't loans at all but contingent liabilities, Bloomberg News reported. In just one year, the difference between ``nonperforming assets'' and ``nonperforming loans'' at DBS Group Holdings has more than quadrupled to S$355 million ($257 million).