Daily Briefing: DBS to halt coal financing by 2021; Swire Properties unveils first residential project

And the number of overseas medical schools approved for practice in Singapore will be cut to 103.

From Bloomberg:

DBS Group Holdings Ltd. will stop financing new coal-fired power plants in any market regardless of the efficiency of the technologies used, the bank said in a statement on its website. It declined to comment on how large its existing coal power plant pipeline is, and said the last of its existing commitments is likely to be completed by 2021.

DBS has been linked to at least two projects in Vietnam, Van Phong 1 and Nghi Son 2, by media reports and climate activists.

The bank joins a long list of lenders that have put restrictions in recent years on lending to operations that mine or burn coal, including its Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., which announced its plan to halt financing coal power plants earlier this week. 

Read more here. 

From PropertyGuru:

Swire Properties has launched its first residential project in Singapore designed by Thomas Heatherwick.

Dubbed EDEN, the project is Heatherwick’s first residential project in Asia. Located at 2 Draycott Park in District 10, the project only features 20 apartments. Each unit comes with four en-suite bedrooms and occupies an entire floor spanning over 3,000 sq ft.

Inspired by the city-state’s vision as a ‘city in a garden’, the project features hanging balconies as centrepieces, providing residents a ‘private garden in the sky’, complete privacy and unobstructed 270-degree views.

Read more here. 

From Channel News Asia:

Starting 2020, the list of overseas medical schools whose graduates can practise in Singapore will shrink from 160 to 103. This comes after the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) reviewed the overseas medical schools with registrable basic medical qualifications.

The changes come as the need to recruit overseas-trained doctors abates, with total annual intakes from local medical schools rising from 300 in 2010 to about 500 in 2018.

"The impact of the increase in local medical school intake will be fully realised from 2023, when these students graduate," said MOH and SMC.

Read more here.