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Under new proposals, MAS may have more power to investigate company figures, take regulatory action and demand compulsory advising before the sale of products.

2010 is looking sick for the biomedical sector, with firms declaring hiring freezes and government figures now revealing a 13.3 percent drop in biomedical output.

While a few have succeeded in restructuring their finances, a number of Singapore-listed firms in China remain burdened with debt and even fraud.

Singapore Sports Hub, with planned loans worth S$1.8 billion ($1.3 billion), is asking banks to lower their interest rate.

Investments in the manufacturing and services sectors are expected to hold their ground this year.

Companies must use social media marketing in 2010, or risk being left behind by their competitors. But this comes with a note of caution. According to results of a global survey covering 1068 marketing professionals worldwide, 66 percent of respondents will be investing in Social Media Marketing (SMM) in the next 12 months. These were figures released by marketing analytics company Alterian by its Singapore office. Of those investing in SMM, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities. This supports other statistics from the survey which found the majority of respondents (67 percent) feel social media is either ‘increasingly important’ or ‘critical to success’. Alterian Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, Chris Tew, said 2010 marked the start of the digital decade for marketing. He said: “Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognise this.” The survey found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents was investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools, a significant percentage considering the maturity of the channel.

Banking jobs will be in hot demand, but healthcare is still lousy; find out which jobs offer the best prospects and the highest pay.

DBS will be the first bank to open a branch at Resorts World Sentosa.

Keppel’s telecommunications and transportation arm attributed the 13.3 percent drop to poor investments and costs from restructuring.

With the new deal, MSN users will now have direct access to Singapore’s popular Hungrygowhere.com food website.

Temasek Holdings rejects the $2.6 billion Hong Kong IPO of the world's biggest aluminum maker.

Ezra, one of the oil & gas industry's integrated offshore support solutions provider, plans to bid for over $1 billion worth of deals from West Africa.

The 17 Tbps link will connect Singapore,Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

The acquisition will double the company’s China property portfolio from 1.4m sqm to 2.8m sqm.  

The close of the Tiger Airways public offer had an overwhelming 27,072 valid applications for 260.1 million shares in, resulting in an oversubscribing by 21 times. A total of approximately S$247.7 million in gross proceeds have been raised from the IPO, of which approximately S$233.3 million will go to Tiger Airways. Based on the Offering Price of S$1.50, Tiger Airways will have a market capitalisation of S$781.3 million at listing. Commenting on the response to the IPO, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tiger Airways, Tony Davis said, “We are absolutely delighted with the response to this IPO from both the retail investors in Singapore and major global institutional investors. We believe that the significant demand for shares in Tiger Airways from investors around the world is a strong vote of confidence in our low-cost business model and the growth potential of Tiger Airways." With respect to the international offering or placement tranche, the indications of interest received amounted to approximately 683.6 million Offering Shares, resulting in the placement tranche being approximately 4.5 times subscribed. The Shares will be traded in Singapore Dollars and are expected to commence trading on the Main Board of the SGX-ST at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, 22 January 2010. More details are expected via SGX announcements.  

Businesses can now look forward to even faster internet connection with Singtel’s new fibre optic service at lower prices. Ms Chan Yim Leng, SingTel’s Vice President of Business Products, said: “In the market today, businesses typically pay about $500 per month for a 10 Mbps copper connection to their private office network. They can now enjoy up to ten times the speed at around the same price with this new fibre-based service. Singtel expects the new high-speed service will benefit businesses greatly in using cloud computing and other bandwidth hungry infocomm applications such as high-definition video conferencing. The service is called Meg@POP eLite and offers symmetrical speeds of up to 100 Mbps, with the capability of scaling up to 1 Gbps in the future. “With Meg@POP eLite, SMEs can enjoy powerful ICT solutions and business software that only large companies could afford in the past. These solutions allow them to avoid heavy upfront investments in ICT infrastructure and maintenance costs, while improving productivity and simplifying business operations,” Ms Chan added.