Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, said it has US$400 million of outstanding loans in troubled Dubai World, a potential loss it called “manageable.”
DBS said it has lent a total of US$1.3 billion to Dubai-owned companies, while the credit to a finance arm of Dubai World represents 0.2 percent of the bank’s balance sheet.
“The bank believes that the situation is manageable as a substantial portion of this is to Dubai-owned companies operating in Asia that are sound,” such as Labroy and South Beach, the bank said in a statement on its Web site.
South Beach is a prime commercial and residential joint venture in Singapore’s convention district, while Labroy Marine is a local shipyard.
Dubai World, the city-state’s main development conglomerate, said last week it is seeking a six-month reprieve on paying its US$60 billion debt. The announcement sent shockwaves around the world on Thursday and Friday as investors feared a possible default by Dubai and its state-owned businesses, which together owe an estimated US$80 billion.
Stock markets in the United Arab Emirates plunged for a second day yesterday. The Emirati stock markets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi closed trading down 5.61 percent and 3.57 percent respectively, as investors continued a selloff triggered by Dubai World’s debt woes.
Spokesmen for Singapore’s two other homegrown lenders, the United Overseas Bank and the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, said yesterday that they had no significant exposure to Dubai borrowers.
Singapore’s central bank said the country’s exposure to the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is one of seven emirates, is less than 1 percent of total banking assets.
“We do not expect developments in Dubai to adversely affect Singapore’s financial stability,” said the bank, known as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). “MAS continues to be in close contact with the financial institutions here, and with central banks and regulators in key jurisdictions.”
Singapore property giant City Developments Ltd (CDL), part of the South Beach joint venture in which Dubai World has a one-third share, said yesterday that it did not expect any impact on itself or the project.
However, it added it was prepared to inject more funding if needed.
“Should the joint venture company require additional funds in the future, the shareholders may be called upon to put in their proportionate share of funding,” CDL said in a statement.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
Packed into a small room, a drone, bipedal robot, supermarket checkout and other devices showcase a vision of China’s software future — one where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei (華為) has replaced Windows and Android. The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony (鴻蒙), an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google’s Android. While Huawei’s recent strong-selling smartphone launches have been closely watched for
The waves of the Aegean Sea lap gently at the tables and chairs of two beach restaurants on Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula. It is an idyllic scene, but one that is totally illegal. Like many others in Greece, the two establishments on Pefkochori Beach do not have a license to set up shop so close to the water. After a wave of protests last summer by locals about bars and restaurants illegally covering beaches with sunbeds and tables, the Greek state is taking action. It is cracking down on rogue tourist practices with surveillance drones, satellite imagery and a special app
AI BOOM: With many stocks trading at historically high levels, the TAIEX is expected to drop about 600 points in the third quarter as investors seek to pocket their profits Taiwan’s main board could experience a technical pullback after the TAIEX soared more than 28 percent in the first half of this year following a strong showing by artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks, analysts said on Saturday, predicting that the index would make a comeback in the fourth quarter. On Friday, the last trading session of this month, the TAIEX rose 126.27 points, or 0.55 percent, to 23,032.25, pushing up the main board by 5,101.44 points, or 28.4 percent, in the first six months of the year. Of the major indices in the world, the TAIEX only trailed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index