Singapore

Major reforms of insolvency laws are in the process of being enacted, as Singapore tries to position itself as a regional hub for insolvency work and debt restructuring, said Senior Minister of State for Law Indranee Rajah on Monday, Channel NewsAsia reported. Speaking at the Regional Insolvency Conference organised by the Law Society of Singapore, she noted that an increase in global interest rates and a tightening of liquidity in markets are likely to increase the risk of corporate defaults. This could in turn lead to an increase in a number of restructuring and insolvencies.

Singapore said banks with a “significant retail presence” in the city-state will soon be required to maintain some liquid assets in the country to support their short-term cash outflows, Bloomberg News reported. The new liquidity framework applies to all currencies, and banks also need to hold liquid Singapore dollar assets separately to manage their liabilities in the local currency, Lim Hng Kiang, the deputy chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, said in a speech last night.

CapitaLand Ltd., Singapore’s biggest developer, may alter the size of its apartments as it seeks to improve affordability to combat government measures aimed at curbing speculation and lowering prices, Bloomberg reported. The developer sold 139 residential units in the island-state in the three months ended June, 31 percent fewer than in the same period last year, it said yesterday as it forecast “headwinds” in the near term with the housing curbs.

Singapore will from Monday make it a money-laundering offence for banks to assist tax-evaders stash their funds in the Asian city-state, in the latest move by the region’s fastest-growing wealth management hub to join the global crackdown on tax evasion and illicit funds, the Financial Times reported. The fight against tax evasion is playing out against a backdrop of rising wealth among the world’s richest people, creating a scramble by banks to offer services in tax-efficient jurisdictions such as Singapore.

Banks in Singapore are urgently scrutinising their account holders as an imminent deadline on stricter tax evasion measures forces them to decide whether to send some of their wealthiest clients packing. The Southeast Asian city-state has grown into the world's fourth-biggest offshore financial centre but, with U.S. and European regulators on the hunt for tax cheats, the government is clamping down to forestall the kind of onslaught from foreign authorities that is now hitting Switzerland's banks.

Singapore Airlines has asked its captains to volunteer for unpaid leave amid a global economic slowdown that has dented long-haul travel demand, the airline says. The move came nearly a year after the company - considered a bellwether for the full-service airline industry - made a similar offer to its first officers, The New Zealand Herald reported. The airline has also frozen its intake of cadet pilots as part of a slew of cost-cutting measures.

Singapore’s economy grew in the past three months of 2012, avoiding an expected recession as services put in a strong showing and gross domestic product figures for the first three quarters of the year were revised downwards, Reuters reported today. Singapore, whose trade is equal to about three times its G.D.P., has been badly hit by the weakness in Western economies, which has crimped demand for many of its exports. The city-state’s electronic manufacturers have also failed to tap surging demand for smartphones, unlike rivals in South Korea and Taiwan.

The 6,000 customers of MF Global Holdings Ltd's Singapore arm should get well over 90 percent of their money back from the collapsed brokerage, although its creditors may have a tougher time recovering all they are due, Reuters reported. MF Global filed for bankruptcy in the United States on Oct 31, 2011 after a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt spooked counterparties and investors.

Singapore's privately held PhillipCapital Group said on Wednesday it has agreed to buy a majority stake in defunct broker MF Global's Indian unit, Reuters reported. PhillipCapital, which runs brokerage and asset management business across 13 countries, said it would plan to rename the business Phillip Securities India. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed and the transaction is still subject to regulatory approval. PhillipCapital said it will buy a majority stake in the joint venture between Sify Technologies and MF Global and has also agreed to buy the rest of the bankrupt U.S.

Humpuss Sea Transport Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based unit of an Indonesian shipping company, filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., Bloomberg reported. The unit of Jakarta-based PT Humpuss Intermoda Transportasi is already under the control of liquidators in Singapore, where it was incorporated in 1996, according to Monday’s filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Debt and assets were listed at more than $100 million.