Daily Briefing: Singapore amongst the most visited cities in 2016; China dealmaker to get GLP CEO's backing in buyout bid

And here's how much it would cost to live in Singapore in 2050.

Last year, travellers populated the cities of London, Paris, Dubai and New York. Nothing new there. Those cities have attracted throngs of visitors over the years. But last year, Asia proved to be catching up in numbers. One city in particular, Bangkok, received the most number of international overnight visitors (IOV) at 21.47 mil. Data from Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index (GDCI) also show that Singapore is not far behind, standing at #6 on the list with 12.11 mil IOVs. Five cities were also cited as Asia Pacific’s fastest growing destination cities from 2009 to 2016– Osaka, Chengdu, Colombo, Tokyo and Taipei. Osaka had the highest compound annual growth rate of 24.2%, while the rest of the cities followed at 20.1% (Chengdu), 19.6% (Colombo), 18.5% (Tokyo) and 14.5% (Taipei). Read more here.

Chinese dealmaker Fang Fenglei won backing from Global Logistic Properties Ltd.’s chief executive officer as he pursues a takeover of the $9.2 billion warehouse owner, which could become the biggest Asian buyout deal, people with knowledge of the matter said. Fang’s Beijing-based private equity firm, Hopu Investment Management, submitted an offer for the Singapore company together with Hillhouse Capital Management and GLP CEO Ming Mei, according to the people. Blackstone Group LP and an investor group led by Warburg Pincus also made non-binding bids, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Click here to check out the full story.

Of late, we have been hearing about how Singapore is becoming more and more expensive each year. ECA International, a global HR consultancy firm, published a survey recently on the cost of living in various cities in the world. Unsurprisingly, Singapore’s ranking went up by 2 positions in 2016, as our island state ranked 16th.This leads us to the next question of how expensive Singapore will be if we continue on this trajectory in the future of becoming more expensive. But first, let us take a look at how Singapore has performed in the last few years after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Get to know how much it would cost to live in Singapore in 2050.