An escalator previous an digital display screen and ticker board on the Singapore Change.
Lee Yen Nee | CNBC
SINGAPORE — The Singapore authorities on Friday introduced a sequence of initiatives to lure “promising high-growth” firms from across the area to record on the native inventory market.
Singapore is a well-liked itemizing vacation spot for REITs, or actual property funding trusts. However the city-state has struggled to draw blockbuster preliminary public choices from the tech sector, which has been one of many prime funding themes in world markets.
“We did have know-how firms that got here by absolutely, similar to Nanofilm. We clearly need to see extra of them,” Loh Boon Chye, chief govt of the Singapore Change, informed CNBC in an unique interview.
Nanofilm Applied sciences Worldwide, which gives protecting coating supplies for smartphones and televisions, made its buying and selling debut on the SGX final yr. It was the primary main non-REIT IPO in years.
New initiatives
Singapore’s authorities introduced Friday it can co-invest with state funding agency Temasek in a brand new fund to assist firms increase capital by public listings — whether or not major, secondary or twin — within the city-state.
The fund will begin with a primary tranche of 1.5 billion Singapore {dollars} ($1.1 billion).
Listed below are different initiatives that had been introduced:
- The funding arm of Singapore’s Financial Improvement Board intends to determine a brand new fund to spend money on later-stage firms and work towards an eventual itemizing within the city-state. The fund will begin with as much as 500 million Singapore {dollars}.
- The monetary regulator, Financial Authority of Singapore, will enhance its grants to assist firms defray the price of listings.
- The alternate operator, Singapore Change, will assist high-growth firms to boost funds privately previous to a public itemizing.
“We all know that the initiatives we’re launching in the present day are not any magic bullet,” Singapore’s Minister for Commerce and Business Gan Kim Yong mentioned in a speech asserting the measures.
“However we consider they’ll blow new wind into the sails of our public fairness market, and make SGX not only a viable however a compelling choice for revolutionary progress firms searching for a public itemizing,” he added.
The minister mentioned 4 native start-ups achieved the standing as “unicorns” this yr after being valued at $1 billion or extra. The most recent of the 4 is on-line market start-up Carousell.
These firms and others throughout Asia in high-growth sectors will “come of age” and should search to record on public markets within the coming years, mentioned Gan. So, “we must always try to anchor these firms in Singapore,” he added.
SPAC listings
The SGX has in the previous couple of years launched initiatives to spice up IPOs.
Earlier this month, the alternate introduced new guidelines to permit the itemizing of particular objective acquisition firms or SPACs. The transfer was seen as a option to revive Singapore’s IPO market.
The alternate’s CEO informed CNBC there is a “sturdy pipeline” of potential SPAC listings — and the primary submission may come by in a few weeks.
Singapore’s inventory market has outperformed a lot of its regional friends this yr, with the benchmark Straits Occasions Index gaining round 7.8% as of Thursday’s shut.
However preliminary public choices on the Singapore Change have been lackluster compared. Within the first half of this yr, Singapore drew simply three IPOs that raised $200 million in proceeds, whereas fellow monetary hub Hong Kong had 46 listings that raised $27.4 billion.
— CNBC’s Weizhen Tan contributed to this report.
Correction: This text has been up to date to replicate that the SGX CEO mentioned the primary SPAC submission, not itemizing, might be accomplished in a few weeks.