SG Market (27 Mar 15)

Expect a lacklustre opening from Singapore shares, after Wall Street ended lower in a volatile trading session spurred by new military operations by the Saudis and its gulf allies in Yemen.

Regional bourses are trading flattish this morning in Tokyo and Seoul, while Sydney is up 0.7%.

From a chart perspective, the STI resistance is tipped at the recent 3,460 peak, with support at 3,400.

Stocks to watch:
*Property: Colliers highlights 10 properties sold year-to-date for $34.3m in Spore's property auction market, double 4Q14's $13.7m and almost 2x the $17.9m in 1Q14. Of the 10 properties sold, only 1 was an owner sale: a row of 5 adjoining shop houses that was sold for $14.6m. The other 9 properties were put up by mortgagees (or lenders) comprised 1 factory unit and 8 residential homes. 187 properties (56 by lenders, 131 by owners) were put up for sale by auction in 1Q15.

*DBS: Has lost out it its bid to acquire the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) private banking unit, Coutts International, after Bloomberg reported that RBS has agreed to sell the unit to Union Bancaire Privee for US$600m-$800m.

*Keppel Land: Parent Keppel Corp has extended the offer deadline to 31 Mar, 5.30pm, and does not intend to extend the offer beyond that. Keppel Corp has obtained 93.2% control of Keppel Land. Should Keppel Corp fail to attain 95.5% threshold level by the close of the offer, the base offer price of $4.38 will apply.

SGX: Spore Savings Bonds (SSB), a new type of govt bond, will be launched soon to retail investors. SSB, which is principal guaranteed by government, will not penalise early redemption and pays bonus interest when held to maturity. It offers higher returns of a long-term bond, while retaining flexibility of a shorter-term deposit, and safety of an instrument guaranteed by govt. To make plain vanilla corp bonds more readily available to retail investors, MAS and SGX will ease the financial and admin costs for corp issuers seeking to tap the retail mkt. 2 new frameworks as well as a tax deduction have been proposed, and MAS and SGX targets to implement them in 2Q15.

*Noble: The Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) has refuted some of Iceberg Research’s claims, highlighting that the MPA’s investigation of Noble Resources in 2013 did not find any malpractices, and that Iceberg’s assertion that the high profile bankruptcy of OW Bunker could have certainly been avoided had MPA acted on the information sent to them, was untrue.

*Cosco Corp: Secured contract with Maersk Line to build seven 3,600 TEU container vessels, scheduled for delivery between Apr 2017 and Nov 2017. Maersk has also an option for an additional two container vessels, to be exercised within eight months.