Daily Briefing: Singapore stocks downgraded amidst 'unexciting growth'; Fintech Transferwise enables remittances via PayNow

And payments firm Wirecard is suing Financial Times.

From CNBC:

HSBC has lowered its stance on Singapore stocks to "neutral" from "overweight," and downgraded Hong Kong equities from "neutral" to "underweight," it said in a report dated March 26, which outlined the bank's Asian equity strategy for the second-quarter.

Stock markets in Singapore and Hong Kong have been rising this year after suffering losses in 2018. The Straits Times Index has moved 4.22% higher so far this year, whilst the Hang Seng Index jumped 11.15% in the same period.

In Singapore, sectors that focus on the domestic market have failed to lift the economy, the bank said, adding it would in turn limit how much companies can grow. That’s despite the stock exchange offering attractive valuations and the third highest yield in Asia at around 4.8 percent, added HSBC.

“Growth is unexciting,” the bank’s analysts wrote. “Overall, we find other markets offer a more attractive proposition than Singapore, so we move our stance to neutral.”

Read more here.

From e27:

TransferWise, the global remittance fintech company, announced that it will allow customers to fund their remittances using Singapore-based mobile payment service PayNow. TransferWise becomes the first international money transfer company to do so.

The launch will allow TransferWise customers in Singapore to have four options for making payments: credit card, debit card, bank transfer, and PayNow, which allows it to offer the most number of payment methods in Singapore.

TransferWise was founded in 2011 and headquartered in London with a mission to make international money transfers instant, convenient, transparent and eventually free. The company said that it handles $5.34b (US$3.9b) in cross-border transfers every month for its 4 million customers.

Read more here.

From Reuters:

German payments company Wirecard said it was suing the Financial Times over a series of investigative reports that it said made use of, and misrepresented, business secrets.

Wirecard has filed a suit at the Munich regional court against both the FT and its reporter, Dan McCrum, seeking a ruling on the merits of its case. If successful, the company would then press for monetary redress.

The fightback comes after the FT alleged in January that Wirecard’s Singapore staff had engaged in fraud and false accounting, basing its reporting on a law firm’s probe of allegations made by an unnamed whistleblower.

The newspaper’s revelations wiped billions off the market value of Wirecard, Germany’s leading ‘fintech’ company that only last year was promoted to the blue-chip DAX index, and triggered an investigation by Singapore police.

Read more here.