Daily Briefing: Singapore oil borrowers seek more slack; Effects of cooling measures linger

And Singapore opens a $376m national gallery.

Borrowers in Singapore, so far spared from a wave of defaults in the oil services industry, are starting to ask creditors to cut them some slack. Three companies including Dyna-Mac Holdings Ltd., part-owned by Keppel Corp., this month are asking bond holders to alter certain debt limits or profit targets as contract delays wreck firms’ earnings. Read more here.

The spectre of further price decline due to the cooling measures weighs heavily on the real estate market and has permeated a sense of gloom which resulted in the further drop in prices and transactions, said the report. SLP International further noted that the rental index of mass-market private homes also witnessed the same trend it peaked in Q1 2013 before it registered a long period of contraction, dropping by an average of 3.4 percent per year. Find out more here.

Singapore on Tuesday opened to the public a Sg$532 million ($376 million) National Gallery that boasts the world's biggest public collection of Southeast Asian modern art. The new attraction is housed inside the British colonial-era former City Hall and Supreme Court buildings, which were fused into a single facility during a 10-year makeover. Read more here.