Daily Briefing: Singapore offers a helping hand to China; Why SIA remains attractive for investors

And is it more expensive to own a car than use ride-hailing apps?

From AP via Yahoo!: Singapore is offering up its financial industry to help bankroll China's ambition to develop a network of ports, railways, power plants and other projects across a broad swath of Asia, Europe and east Africa. By partnering on financial matters, Singapore appears to be looking to smooth recently strained ties with China and profit from the Asian giant's rising global aspirations. Experts say it faces stiff competition from other financial centers including Hong Kong and London, which also hope to play key roles in China's bid to integrate economies along the path of the historic Silk Road.

From Dollars and Sense via Yahoo!: Singapore Airlines Limited (SIA) is Singapore’s national airline, which has been around for decades. In recent weeks, SIA’s share price has been trading at around the S$10 mark. The biggest news behind the drop in SIA’s share price in recent times was the net loss of $138 million in the Jan-Mar 2017 quarter, coming from a $112 million fine by the EU. This is in stark contrast to the $225 million net profit one year ago for the same period. The loss was also SIA’s first quarterly loss in more than 7 years, a great shock to some investors, who also saw its share price drop close to its 52-week low.

From Value Penguin via Yahoo!: Singapore is notorious for having expensive cars. With the average cost of cars hovering around S$106,000 in 2017, cars in Singapore are 4-5x more expensive than cars in the US or Korea. In fact, Singapore's car price is the highest in the world. This poses an interesting question: is using ride-hailing services like Uber and Grab actually cheaper than owning a car in Singapore? According to the analysis conducted by our team at ValuePenguin, the cost of using Uber every day is quite comparable to owning and driving a car.