Jerry Tan, a 77-year-old retired Singaporean businessman, was among dozens of bondholders in the city who joined forces last week to submit demands as more companies seek to restructure debt payments.
“The only way to put ourselves in a position of some strength is to come together as a group,” said Tan, who said he owns more than S$8 million (US$5.9 million) of notes.
“The whole bond market is really bad and you can expect a lot more defaults. The authorities should step up to protect investors and Singapore’s reputation as a major financial center,” Tan said.
Tan was among a crowd of housewives, former traders and entrepreneurs who gathered outside a trustee’s office to deliver a demand for immediate payment on S$100 million of notes issued by shipping trust Rickmers Maritime, which is seeking a debt-equity swap.
A separate group issued a similar notice of acceleration on S$125 million of bonds sold by Malaysian oil services company Perisai Petroleum Teknologi Bhd after talks on a reorganization broke down.
Three defaults in the past year and at least seven restructuring proposals have shaken Singapore’s reputation as an Asian finance hub, prompting the Singaporean government to tighten oversight of private banks and aid businesses caught up in a global oil and shipping slump. The city is also reeling from a penny-stock crash, the worst quarter for home prices in seven years and the highest bad loans since 2009.
“For financially savvy investors, they need to know what they’re buying into and not just look at the yields,” said Benedict Koh, a professor of finance at Singapore Management University.
“In workout situations, they must acknowledge that a haircut is inevitable, get some independent advice and decide whether the discount is fair or too deep,” Koh said.
Singapore’s high net-worth individuals increased 27 percent between 2009 and last year to 103,600, according to Capgemini SA, becoming major buyers of higher-yielding notes.
While their ranks include former traders and executives, many were classed as wealthy investors based on the apartments they live in rather than their ability to absorb losses.
Local-currency junk bonds fell 1.9 percent last quarter, according to an IHS Markit Ltd index, the most in data going back to June 2012.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore last month said it is working to boost investor safeguards by year-end, while the government plans to enhance legal provisions for debt restructuring.
Rickmers is not expected to revise its debt-equity swap proposal, despite the bondholders’ action, Soeren Andersen, chief executive officer of Rickmers Trust Management, the manager of the trust, said on Wednesday last week.
Its 8.45 percent notes were quoted at S$0.35 on the dollar, according to DBS Bank Ltd prices.
“So far, the company’s proposals have been most inequitable to bondholders,” said Jeffrey Sia, a retired trader who owns less than S$1 million of Rickmers bonds.
“We will stand united to protect our interests,” Sia said.
Perisai is offering an alternative proposal to bondholders after its plan to defer repayment of its S$125 million notes was rejected by bondholders on Monday, the day the notes were due.
The company yesterday said in an exchange filing it received a notice from the bond trustee that an event of default had occurred.
Investors that pool their holdings beyond a 25 percent threshold are allowed to make demands for immediate repayment. Perisai shares tumbled a record 28 percent in Kuala Lumpur.
“Yes, it’s our responsibility that we bought the bonds, but the company can’t just brush us aside,” bondholder Cheng Fong Kiew said on Monday, after rejecting Perisai’s deferment plan.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained