Daily Briefing: Economy forecasts point to 3% contraction in Q2; Indonesia's MDI Ventures hires Singapore head

And the Asia Pacific Exchange registers its first futures trade for high-sulphur fuel oil.

From Reuters:

Singapore’s economy is expected to have contracted almost 3% in the second quarter, a slight improvement from advance estimates but reaffirming the risk of a possible recession as the trade and manufacturing sectors struggle.

Final gross domestic product is forecast to have fallen 2.9% on a seasonally adjusted and annualized quarter-on-quarter basis, a Reuters poll showed. That is smaller than the 3.4% contraction forecast by the government but well below the first quarter’s 3.8% growth.

It would be the latest in a string of bad indicators for Singapore, often seen as a bellwether for global growth as international trade dwarfs its domestic economy.

“Given weak recent trends in industrial production, non-oil domestic exports and retail sales, I see little room for optimism,” said Steve Cochrane, Moody’s Analytics Asia-Pacific chief economist.

Read more here.

From DealStreetAsia:

MDI Ventures, the CVC arm of state-owned telco firm Telkom Indonesia, has appointed Shannon Lee Chaluangco of C31 Ventures to lead the Indonesian firm’s newly opened investment arm in Singapore, per an announcement.

At MDI Singapore, Chaluangco will take up the role of an investment director. Prior to this, she has served as a senior analyst and investment manager at multiple venture funds in the US and Asia.

Chaluangco began her career as an analyst at an angel group in the US in 2011, before joining as an associate at EY. She then returned to the venture capital industry in Singapore where she handled investments from seed to growth stage, and held roles at IMJ Investment Partners (now Spiral Ventures) and then Openspace Ventures (where she was part of the founding team).

Her experience in the corporate venture capital space came through her two-year stint at C31 Ventures, the VC arm of CapitaLand. Having joined C31 Ventures in 2017 as an investment manager, she soon became the team lead, where she helped manage the $110m fund and made strategic investments into startups at series B stage and beyond.

Read more here.

From Reuters:

Singapore-based Asia Pacific Exchange (APEX) this week registered the first exchange of futures for physicals (EFP) for its 380-centistoke high-sulphur fuel oil (380-cst HSFO) futures contract, the company said in a statement.

A total of 3,000 metric tonnes of 380-cst HSFO were transacted on 6 August through the EFP facility, APEX said in a statement on Thursday.

EFP deals allow holders of contracts for the same month to exchange their futures positions for a physical delivery.

Since its listing in April, the average daily volume for the 380-cst futures contracts have been around 26,000 lots, representing 260,000 tonnes of the fuel, with an open interest of around 5,500 lots, or 55,000 tonnes, the statement said.

Read more here.