Daily Briefing: Singapore law firm clears Wirecard of some corruption claims; Temasek invests US$29m in Vietnamese Internet major VNG

And tech-enabled student housing startup Oxfordcaps raises $11m in series A funding.

From Bloomberg:

Wirecard AG surged the most in more than a decade after saying irregularities found in an external investigation into fraud allegations in Asia weren’t material.

Whilst the company-- which had previously rejected wrongdoing -- acknowledged a number of accounting oversights and potential criminal liability for some employees in Singapore, the sums involved were not significant for a company with more than 2 billion euros (US$2.3b) in annual sales, according to a Wirecard statement.

The selected findings of the external report from Singapore-based law firm Rajah & Tann was limited to specific transactions and based on documents provided by the company. Rajah & Tann couldn’t resolve all the issues, saying it “could not correlate certain payments made between business partners and Wirecard entities with agreements between them.” The firm also found evidence of contracts being created for audit purposes.

Read more here.

From DealStreetAsia:

Singapore state investor Temasek has invested about US$29m in additional shares of Vietnamese Internet major VNG Corporation to own 6.35% of the company’s voting shares.

Seletar Investments, a unit under the umbrella of Temasek, completed the transaction on March 4, as per a regulatory filing by VNG. Specifically, Seletar purchased an additional 355,820 VNG treasury stocks to own a total of 1.74 million shares, equivalent to a 6.35% interest.

The transaction price was VND1.86 million (US$80.8) apiece, translating into a deal value of US$29m. In January, the Vietnamese firm announced its private placement plan through which it expected to raise at least US$15.6m.

Read more here.

From e27:

Oxfordcaps, a branded and tech-enabled student housing startup with operations in India and Singapore, has raised $11m (US$8.15m) in Series A funding led by Times Internet, a digital unit of India’s leading media company, The Times of India Group.

Existing investors Bangalore-based Kalaari Capital and 500 Startups also co-invested in this round.

The new capital will be used for fuelling its growth with expansion into 10-plus cities in India and standardisation of its student housing product. Oxfordcaps aims to grow its operations across education hubs in India, including Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Dehradun, Indore, Jaipur, Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.

Founded by INSEAD graduate Annu Talreja (CEO) and IIM-Calcutta alum Priyanka Gera (COO), Oxfordcaps provides a technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore.

Read more here.

Photo credit: Bloomberg