Singapore Property and Real Estate News Portal

THERE were some errors in our report, River Valley condo Luma relaunches with prices halved (BT, Nov 14). The condominium is located at River Valley Grove and not St Thomas Walk. The number of units sold earlier was not 10, but six. BT also understands that the developer, Novelty Group, purchased the site for around [...]

ZURICH – Swiss bank UBS AG, under pressure at home to give up on hefty bonus schemes in the face of its poor performance, said on Monday it will introduce a more transparent pay system for top executives. The bank, which is struggling in the sub-prime crisis and whose shares slumped to a new all-time [...]

BANGKOK – Thailand’s fugitive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has divorced his wife in Hong Kong, Thai newspapers reported Saturday. Thaksin and his wife Pojaman Shinawatra, who married in 1976, divorced at the Thai Consul General Office in Hong Kong on Friday, the English-language Nation and Bangkok Post newspapers reported. The stories could not be independently [...]

SINGAPORE – The Encarta World English Dictionary defines ‘capitulate’ as ‘surrender, especially under specified conditions; consent or yield: to give in to an argument, request, pressure or something unavoidable’. It also defines ‘capitulation’ as ‘a giving up of resistance’. Much has been made of the selling of the past year, with some observers believing that [...]

  Dubai rental market on the rise Concern about the credit crunch has created a movement in the Dubai property market away from sales towards rentals, according to industry experts. More and more properties are being marketed for rent rather than being sold on. ‘Speaking to brokers, we have noticed a shift in the market. [...]

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia’s economy is not expected to fall into recession and its currency could gradually firm over the medium term, the central bank chief was quoted on Saturday as saying. Economic growth next year would hit the 3.5 per cent official target, with policies in place to contain the fallout from the global [...]

FRANKFURT – Global central banks are ready to take further steps to ease market tensions and bolster faltering economic growth, top policymakers said on Friday, as world leaders gathered for talks on the economic crisis. Speaking at a conference in Frankfurt, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said [...]

NEW YORK – Merrill Lynch & Co said on Friday that the majority of its best-performing financial advisors will join Bank of America Corp (BOA) when that bank buys Merrill at the end of the year. More than 6,200 advisors accepted a retention package offered by BOA that was targeted at the top-producing brokers, a [...]

JAKARTA – Indonesia’s central bank said on Friday the country’s US$220-billion banking system ‘remains steady and solid’ despite a scare after a small bank failed to settle interbank payments. However, the monetary authority warned that growth in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy next year will be far less than its forecast of 6.5 per cent in [...]

HONG KONG – Hong Kong is heading for a record HK$80 billion (US$10.3 billion) budget deficit for 2008/09 after offering tax concessions and handouts and as a weakening economy depresses public revenues, Deloitte forecast on Thursday. Analysts say Hong Kong’s economy is heading for recession within the next six months, after four years of robust [...]