Daily Briefing: Singapore's hotels of the future; Chinese pharma giant mulls SGX IPO for $500m

And here's why you shouldn't empty your CPF for your first home.

From Forbes:

Two types of robots are utilised by M Social Singapore. One in the restaurant (AUSCA, an egg chef - see image above) and AURA a robot butler who is about to size of a regular vacuum cleaner (but rounder - no judgements). Here he/she/it is in all her/his/its glory after delivering a toothbrush (sorry it's not embedding for some reason).

I have always felt awkward when requesting a toothbrush and some poor soul gets to walk up to my room because I am in a towel and am a forgetful brut. AURA is smart but is in no danger of taking anyone's job today but that won't be the case in the future with what I saw at CES. Arms and autonomous actions are all developing at lightning speed. Perhaps though, we don't need all-singing and all-dancing robot armies.

Read more here.

From ValuePenguin via Yahoo! Finance:

There are couple ways of using your CPF money to finance your home. First, you can replace the whole or a part of your down payment with CPF money. For those who are getting a HDB loan, they can pay up to 10% of the home value with the amount saved up in their CPF Ordinary Accounts.

For those whose are getting a loan from a bank, they can finance up to 15% of their home value with their CPF account. Besides that, you can also use your CPF money to pay for home loan repayments and other fees associated with a home purchase.

However, none of these methods can actually justify the opportunity cost of withdrawing funds from your CPF account.

Read more here.

From DealStreetAsia:

Luye Life Sciences Group Ltd., run by acquisitive Chinese entrepreneur Liu Dianbo, is considering a Singapore initial public offering of its health-care services arm that could raise as much as $500 million, people with knowledge of the matter said. The company’s Luye Medical Group unit plans to evaluate proposals from investment banks as soon as next month, according to the people.

The Singapore-based company aims to sell shares later this year, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. A $500 million offering would be the largest IPO in the city-state from a health-care company in more than five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Luye Medical is seeking to raise funds after expanding through overseas acquisitions including the 2016 purchase of Healthe Care Australia Pty, the nation’s third-largest private hospital operator.

Read more here.