Daily Briefing: MAS bans two 1MDB-linked professionals from finance; Compliance hiring fell in 2017

And here's an undervalued watch retailer you may be ignoring.

From AFP News via Yahoo! Finance:

Singapore on Tuesday banned a jailed banker from working in its financial services industry for life over his links to the international money-laundering scandal involving neighbouring Malaysia's state fund 1MDB.

Financial regulator the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) handed the punishment to Yeo Jiawei, noting he had been convicted of several 1MDB-linked charges, including money laundering, cheating and tampering with witnesses involved in the probe into the case.

Allegations that huge sums were misappropriated from 1MDB through money-laundering triggered a corruption scandal that has embroiled Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who founded the fund. Najib and the fund have denied wrongdoing.

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From The Motley Fool via Yahoo! Finance:

One net-net stock in the Singapore stock market currently is Cortina Holdings Limited (SGX: C41). The company is a luxury watch retailer that began operations in 1972. It now has a presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

For the six months ended 30 September 2017, Cortina posted revenue of $210.5m, a 15% year-on-year rise. Its net profit surged 63% to $8.9m The company did not cite reasons for the excellent showing, but we can get some clues from its financial results for the full year ended 31 March 2017.

During that period, sales went north by 6% year-on-year to $390.8m while earnings increased 41% to S$11.8 million. The firm said the increase in revenue was on the back of “expansion in the Group’s retail network, notably Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand”.

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From eFinancialCareers:

As we noted in September, compliance hiring in Singapore and Hong Kong fell this year as contracts ran out, banks focused on specialist roles and technology took over jobs. But don’t feel too sorry for your regulatory colleagues – compared with other job functions they remain in demand. Regulatory compliance specialists still achieved pay rises of 10% to 15% when moving banks, says Tim Klimcke, a director at recruitment agency Robert Walters in Singapore.

Read more here.