Rounding up top investing articles from around the web, including articles shared on Twitter.
Slight rise in CPF interest rate to 4.08% for Special, MediSave and Retirement accounts in Q3 (Straits Times)
The interest rate for the Special, MediSave and Retirement accounts of Central Provident Fund (CPF) members for the period between July 1 and Sept 30 has been set at 4.08 per cent a year.
This is a slight increase from 4.05 per cent for the previous quarter, and marks a return to the interest rate declared in the first quarter of 2024.
The CPF Board and Housing Board, in a joint statement on May 29, said the slight rise is due to an increase in the 12-month average yield of 10-year Singapore Government Securities. The interest rate for these accounts is pegged to the average yield plus 1 per cent.
All interest rates are quoted on a per annum basis.
Open-concept HDB White Flats offer more ‘free play’ but resale values could be affected, designers say (CNA)
The flats, which will be located in the Kallang-Whampoa area, will be beamless, with living and bedroom spaces not separated by walls.
This “White Flat” layout is so named because it offers buyers a “white canvas” to design their homes, HDB said on Monday (May 27).
‘We are very grateful’: PM Wong thanks Thailand for SQ321 help (CNA)
When the turbulence-hit Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight SQ321 was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok, Thai authorities swiftly provided aid to the injured passengers and crew.
Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, in a call with his Thai counterpart Srettha Thavisin on Tuesday (May 28), thanked the Thai government for its help.
Thailand to indict influential former PM Thaksin over royal insult (Straits Times)
Thailand’s Attorney-General will indict former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for allegedly insulting the monarchy, said an official on May 29, in a setback to a political heavyweight whose loyalists are currently in government.
The complaint, lodged by the royalist military that ousted the government of his sister Yingluck Shinawatra, had stemmed from an interview the influential tycoon gave to foreign media in 2015.
China’s yuan seeks to challenge the US dollar but traders don’t want to use it (CNA)
Despite Beijing’s determination to boost overseas use of China’s currency, fresh survey findings indicate that an “unwillingness among trading partners to use the yuan” remains the biggest obstacle to cross-border trade settlements.
About 47.7 per cent of surveyed enterprises said the lack of interest among trading partners to use yuan was the main hindrance to its proliferation, according to the first-quarter Cross-Border Yuan Insight report – the results of which were jointly released on Monday by the Bank of Communications, China’s fifth largest bank by size, and Renmin University’s International Monetary Institute think tank.
Among respondents, around one-third of them said the difficulty level remained unchanged from a year prior, while about 11 per cent believed it had worsened.
Union at Samsung Electronics in South Korea says to take strike action (CNA)
Samsung Electronics’ union in South Korea will begin escalating strike action next week over demands for higher wages, union officials said on Wednesday (May 29).
The union, which has about 28,000 members, or more than a fifth of the company’s total workforce, said it will stop work for one day on Jun 7 as part of broader protest measures.
The announcement was made by union officials at a live-streamed press conference, where they held a banner which read: “We can no longer tolerate labour repression, union repression.”
Responding to a decision by the company to increase wages this year by 5.1 per cent, the union has previously said that it wanted an additional day of annual leave as well as transparent performance-based bonuses.
How Temu parent PDD dethroned Alibaba to become China’s most valuable e-commerce company (CNBC)
- PDD’s value-for-money positioning and growth of its Temu marketplace has helped the company lead China’s e-commerce arena, analysts said.
- PDD, which also owns Chinese discount shopping app Pinduoduo has a market-cap of about $208 billion, compared with Alibaba’s $196 billion, according to LSEG data.
- PDD’s net income attributable to ordinary shareholders in the March quarter surged 246%, while that of Alibaba plunged 86%.
China’s $47.5 billion chip fund will likely focus on AI amid U.S. export curbs, NYU professor says (CNBC)
- China’s new third semiconductor fund will focus on advanced chips for AI and establishing the entire supply chain, said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.
- “And now, because [Fund 3] is established in the middle of the AI boom, I believe they will put more effort, emphasis on advanced computing chips and memory chips for future AI,” Ma told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Wednesday.
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