Morgan Stanley aims to move to a new office in Singapore, seeking a bigger space in the financial district to accommodate its expansion.
The US firm is in advanced discussions for five floors at the upcoming IOI Central Boulevard Towers, which would give it certain signage rights, people familiar with the matter said.
The space, which would be able to house about 1,000 people, would cater to Morgan Stanley’s growing number of staff in Singapore, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is private.
Photo: Bloomberg
Morgan Stanley’s businesses across Southeast Asia have grown steadily, and it remains positive on the outlook for the region, a spokesman for the firm said.
He confirmed the plan to lease five floors at the new development from late next year, with the location to serve as the bank’s headquarters for Southeast Asia.
Representatives for the developer, Malaysia’s IOI Properties Group Bhd, did not reply to requests for comment.
Morgan Stanley’s expansion is being driven by growth in its fixed-income and wealth businesses, as well as an increase in technology and back-office employees, the people said.
The move to the Marina Bay area, next to the well-known Lau Pa Sat hawker center, would see it take up slightly more than 9,290m2 and move out of its current location, where it has been for more than 25 years, they said.
Global firms are boosting their presence in Singapore to manage or expand their Asian operations. A boom in private banking, family offices and other financial services during the COVID-19 pandemic has bolstered demand for swanky offices in the city-state’s central business district.
In April, the overall grade A vacancy rate in Singapore was 4.6 percent, data from Colliers International Group Inc showed.
That was much lower than Manhattan and Hong Kong.
Demand is likely to continue to come mainly from banking, insurance and financial services, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts wrote in a note last month.
Morgan Stanley would be sharing space at the new development with Amazon.com Inc.
The property comprises 117,058m2 of grade A office space, IOI Properties Group’s Web site says.
The new office would provide the New York-based bank with the latest technology infrastructure and flexible workplace design, the spokesman said.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
RSS