Daily Briefing: Singapore stocks sink with O&M sector; Singapore, Malaysia sign bullet train deal

And SGX blames faulty disk for halt.

0144 GMT [Dow Jones] Singapore’s FTSE Straits Times Index trades 0.5% lower at 2913.16 soon after Tuesday’s open, snapping recent gains that had put it at its highest in nearly three months. Offshore marine firms and developers appear to be the drag; Sembcorp Industries (U96.SG) is down 1.4% and City Developments (C09.SG) loses 1%, while there are few large-cap gainers to balance the index. Read more here.

Malaysia and Singapore signed an agreement Tuesday to pursue an ambitious high-speed rail link touted as a first for Southeast Asia that would knit the historically fractious neighbours more closely together. The 350-kilometre (217-mile) bullet-train line from the regional financial hub of Singapore to Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur is expected to slash travel times to 90 minutes from the five or more hours by road today. Find out more here.

Singapore Exchange Ltd., whose stock market suffered a five-hour halt last week, said the issues were caused by a hard disk failure and an application that didn’t detect the fault. The exchange has replaced the disk and submitted an interim report to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Chief Executive Officer Loh Boon Chye told reporters on Tuesday. Investigations are ongoing and the bourse is working to determine the cause of the disk failure. Read more here.