Daily Briefing: GIC to invest in Central Retail's IPO; Nomura to hire private bankers in Singapore amidst wealth management push

And Singapore Tourism Board taps on halal travel boom.

From Reuters:

GIC and funds advised by U.S. investor Capital Research Management Company will invest in Thailand-based retailer Central Retail Corp’s IPO worth up to US$2.4b.

The IPO, first announced in July, comes after Thailand took the top IPO ranking in Southeast Asia in 2019 with US$4b in fundraisings, according to Refinitiv data. A slew of large issues are in the pipeline for this year.

Central Retail, controlled by the billionaire Chirathivat family’s Central Group, will use the funds to partly repay debt and expand the business in Thailand and overseas, company officials told a news conference on Friday.

“In the next decade in Thailand... we will be proactive with partnerships and M&A,” Central Retail CEO Yol Phokasub told reporters.

Read more here.

From Bloomberg:

Nomura Holdings Inc. plans to hire dozens of private bankers in Hong Kong and Singapore in a bid to extend its wealth management push from Japan and mainland China to the rest of Asia.

The Tokyo-based firm, which has already outlined aggressive plans for China, aims to grow the assets it manages from those two hubs by five times to US$50billion by March 2026, said Yuji Hibino, a senior managing director in charge of the business for Asia excluding Japan. He wants to almost double the number of relationship managers to 100 in three years, from 57 as of December.

Japan’s biggest brokerage is chasing the growing ranks of rich Asians to boost its wealth operation, which has dodged the waves of job cuts undertaken to restore profitability at its overseas securities business. It’s a crowded market, though, dominated by the Swiss banks and coveted by the likes of Morgan Stanley, which is also seeking to expand.

Read more here. 

From TTG Asia:

Singapore is stepping up its game for Muslim travellers with a mega campaign set to launch as early as next month.
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) announced that it will be working together with booking platform Have Halal Will Travel (HHWT) and research company

CrescentRating on a series of tourism products and marketing collaterals targeting Muslim travellers around Asia.

These STB projects include a 44-page guide book developed with CrescentRating that details not only halal dining offerings in Singapore, but also hidden cultural activities and local Malay entrepreneurs and business owners that travellers can discover, revealed Fazal Bahardeen, CEO of CrescentRating & Halaltrip.

Read more here.