Daily Briefing: Singaporeans eye overseas investments; Most resale flats no longer have COV

While foreign investment in Singapore has increased tremendously on the back of mega deals such as Qatar Investment Authority’s purchase of Asia Square Tower 1 for US$2.45 billion, domestic investors remain focused on diversifying their exposure overseas.

According to recent reports by analysts, Singapore investors are allocating more capital to real estate worldwide, with the US, UK and Germany being among the top destinations.

“Asia’s biggest spenders are from Hong Kong (US$4.9 billion), Singapore (US$4.1 billion), South Korea (US$1.9 billion) and Japan (US$1.6 billion). Almost all their capital targeted the world’s three largest and most liquid real estate markets, with the US receiving US$10 billion, the UK pocketing US$6 billion, and Germany US$2 billion,” JLL said.

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Resale flat prices have barely moved since mid-2015. In the past three quarters, they dipped by a barely perceptible 0.5% between Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, and then by a tiny 0.1% in Q2 2017. But while prices have been static, the volume of resale transactions rose from 4,530 to 6,001, between Q1 and Q2.

Traditionally (but tradition is never reliable), this suggests an inflection point; when sales volumes go up but prices are static, it means prices have reached the level where buyers are starting to flood back in. In the past, that would get everyone excited: what followed was often a sharp increase in prices. These days that probably won’t happen – a combination of loan curbs and cooling measures are in the way.

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Shell calls IdeaRefinery a “no-strings-attached” program. “Neither Shell nor its partners retain any equity or benefit commercially from the growth of the startups,” says Thio Chin-Wui, social performance and social investment advisor at Shell Singapore. IdeaRefinery also contributes to Shell’s goal of becoming a lab to test and commercialize clean energy solutions.

Nonetheless, Shell has a corporate venture capital arm called Shell Technology Ventures. The VC firm’s head, Steve McGrath, is an advisor in IdeaRefinery.

Many corporations in Singapore have set up their own accelerators. Daimler, the company that owns Mercedes Benz, runs the Startup Autobahn Singapore Fintech Accelerator. The program gathers problems faced by teams throughout Daimler and then invites startups to help solve them. The largest newspaper publisher in the country, Singapore Press Holdings, ran its own accelerator, although the program has died.

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