Daily Briefing: Standard Chartered eyes merging 10 country operations in Singapore; Cancelled Singapore-Malaysia rail link to boost airline firms

And here’s how Singapore subways could get a boost from F1 technology.

From CNBC:

Whilst some companies could lose from Malaysia's decision to cancel the high speed rail project with Singapore, some airlines like AirAsia and Singapore Airlines could benefit from it.

“’Investors have been discounting that [certain airlines would] lose a lot of traffic to rail when this happens because for the short-haul flights, the economics make sense for passengers to to switch to rail,’ Crucial Perspectives Corrine Png told CNBC's ‘Squawk Box’ after the Malaysian government announced its decision.

Among the names expected to benefit are Jetstar Asia, which counts 10 percent of its traffic from the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore route, as well as AirAsia Group and Singapore Airlines, which see the route contributing to roughly 4 percent of traffic, Png said.”

Read more here.

From Bloomberg Finance:

Standard Chartered is eyeing to create two new hubs for its Asian operations in Singapore and Hong Kong to simplify its extensive network across at least 10 countries and reduce costs, people familiar with the plan said.

“The bank has drawn up plans to consolidate as many as 10 Southeast and South Asian countries -- potentially including Indonesia and India -- under a new Singapore subsidiary as soon as next year, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the details aren’t finalized. Its intended to allow the bank to manage its assets and capital more efficiently and could potentially reduce the size of the emergency buffers regulators require the firm to maintain, one person said.

Standard Chartered is also consolidating some of its non-China North Asian countries such as South Korea into a separate Hong Kong subsidiary, said the people. The plans aren’t final and could change, the people said.”

Read more here.

From CNBC:

The research arm of Formula 1 car-maker McLaren is looking to apply F1 technology to Singapore's subway.
“The British firm, which has long provided analytics for the international racing series, is focused on solutions for global motor sports, automotive, health and transport sectors, according to Chief Operating Officer Celia Gaffney.

Speaking to CNBC's Dan Murphy on the sidelines of Innovfest Unbound, an annual technology conference, Gaffney explained how Singaporean public transport operator SMRT could benefit from McLaren's expertise.

‘We're adapting some of the loggers and sensors that we use on the F1 side of the business, looking at how we can put them on parts of the SMRT train fleet and then capturing that data, help them anticipate, simulate and predict when there might be failures.’”

Read more here.