Market Snapshot

Singapore stocks opened flat on Wednesday. STI was unchanged; YZJ Fin and Mapletree Ind Tr up 1%.

Stocks in Focus

OCBC and Great Eastern :Insurer Great Eastern will resume trading after a vote for it to be delisted fell through at its extraordinary general meeting on Tuesday. A conditional exit offer made by OCBC to take the insurer private received less than the 75 per cent approvals required for it to be passed. Another resolution to satisfy Great Eastern’s free-float requirement – which includes a one-for-one bonus issue resolution comprising new ordinary shares and newly created Class C non-voting shares – was passed. After the announcement, shares of OCBC ended Tuesday 0.8 per cent or S$0.14 higher at S$16.71; shares of Great Eastern have been suspended since July 2024.

Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT) : Temasek’s Mapletree Investments, the sponsor of MIT, said in its annual report for the financial year ended March 2025 that it is looking to expand and diversify its footprint in three of its four core sectors of data centres, logistics and student housing. It seeks data centre opportunities in core and rapidly emerging markets in Europe, as well as in mature and high-potential emerging markets in Asia-Pacific. Most of Mapletree Investments’ data centre assets are held by MIT. Units of MIT ended Tuesday 1.5 per cent or S$0.03 lower at S$2.

IReit Global : It secured two leases in Spain in June, totalling around 5,200 square metres. The first lease is by a data centre operator, an existing tenant who has occupied an office building in Barcelona since 2022. The second tenancy involves a prominent and rapidly growing Spanish company which signed a seven-year lease for an office building located within a Barcelona business park. These tenancies will raise the Europe-focused real estate investment trust’s overall occupancy rate to 83 per cent from about 77 per cent, after letting, said the manager on Tuesday. IReit units ended unchanged at S$0.28 before the announcement.

Trading halt: Fuji Offset Plates Manufacturing called for a trading halt on Wednesday morning pending an announcement. The counter finished Tuesday S$0.025 or 3.3 per cent lower at S$0.73.

SG Local News

UOL Group’s subsidiary prices $225 mil notes at 2.78% for institutional and accredited investors

UOL Group’s wholly-owned subsidiary, UOL Treasury Services, has priced its $225 million notes due 2032 at 2.78%.

The notes are to be issued as the fifth series of notes under the group’s $2 billion multicurrency medium term note programme. The net proceeds are expected to be used for general corporate purposes of UOL and its subsidiaries, including refinancing of existing borrowings and financing of working capital and capital expenditure requirements of the group.

Singapore tops AI readiness rankings, first in Asia-Pacific and 4th in the world when it comes to tech mastery

Singapore has been ranked as the country with the highest level of artificial intelligence (AI) readiness in the world, according to Coursera’s latest Global Skills Report. The report also ranked Singapore fourth in the world and first in the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to overall technology mastery level.