Market Snapshot

Singapore stocks opened higher on Friday. STI rose 0.15%; AvePoint up 7%; Seatrium, UOL, AEM SGD up over 1%; YZJ Maritime, Great Eastern, YZJ Shipbldg up within 1%.

Stocks in Focus

Frencken: The tech solutions provider on Thursday announced that it plans to raise S$100 million through a proposed placement of 44.1 million shares at S$2.2687 each. The new shares will be offered privately to institutional and accredited private investors. The proposed placement share price is at a 10 per cent discount and represents about 10.3 per cent of the existing issued shares as at Thursday. The counter closed flat at S$2.54 on Tuesday, before the company called for a trading halt. It resumes trading on Friday.

Seatrium: Offshore and marine player Seatrium and Brazilian oil giant Petrobras are discussing a potential tie-up to explore offshore solutions in natural gas, said the respective CEOs of the two companies on Thursday. Seatrium is looking at how it can support Petrobras in “the challenge to liquefy gas offshore” and be part of the exportation of gas to Asia and other markets. Seatrium shares rose 0.9 per cent or S$0.02 to close at S$2.20 on Thursday.

SG Local News

HSBC Mulls Restructuring Singapore Units to Simplify Operations

HSBC Holdings Plc is planning to overhaul its Singapore operations by combining its major banking services under one entity to streamline the structure, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move would essentially bring HSBC’s local wholesale, retail and private banking operations under one roof, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.

HSBC has been on a major restructuring drive over the past two years since Georges Elhedery took over as chief executive officer in September 2024. The CEO has shut down, merged and sold several businesses in an effort to simplify the bank’s business and reduce costs. In July, The lender agreed to sell its Singapore insurance unit for $2.1 billion.

Singapore Plays Premium Data Centre Game as Johor, Batam Take on Scale

Singapore is carving out a premium role in the region’s data centre boom, prioritising higher-value and resource-efficient workloads rather than competing with neighbouring Johor and Batam on capacity, analysts said.

With land and power at a premium, the Republic is focusing on workloads that have stronger reasons to be hosted on its shores, including those driven by data sovereignty needs or latency-sensitive applications.