Search Results for: Singapore

The paint and coatings industry in Indonesia still has ample room for growth amid booming infrastructure development, although it has had to struggle with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, say officials and industry experts. 

With the property sector being the primary growth driver Indonesian paint and coating sales, the high demand for new housing and the repainting cycle assures the steady demand for paint and coating products, said Mahendra Chahar, senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan.…

Unprecedently severe bottlenecks in merchandise trades between Asia and the rest of the world caused by Covid-19 economic disruption is continuing to frustrate apparel retailers in Europe and the US. High levels of demand, port congestion and shortages of containers have been pushing up costs, with shipping rates for the Shanghai-Rotterdam and Shanghai-Los Angeles routes on January 21 being up 296% and 153% year-on-year respectively, according to UK-based maritime consultancy Drewry. …

German banking giant Deutsche Bank is to pay more than USD130 million in the USA for a string of bribes its “business development consultants (BDC)” paid out in Abu Dhabi, China, Italy and Saudi Arabia, in breach of America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).…

AUSTRALIA has chosen an unorthodox path in transitioning to a low carbon economy. Its centre-right government has advised the country’s clean energy agencies to decrease investment in renewables such as solar and wind and instead increase investment in hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, microgrids and energy efficiency.…

A WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes panel will assess whether import restrictions created by the European Union (EU) to reduce the use of carbon-intensive biofuels comply with global trading rules.

The Indonesian government is challenging portions of the EU’s renewable energy directive (RED) linked to EU guidance limiting the indirect land use change (ILUC) of biofuel feedstock cultivation.…

A SHIFT towards home-based work during the Covid-19 epidemic has raised multiple challenges for AML/CFT regulatory compliance departments, from changes in consumer behaviour that affects transaction monitoring, to digitally onboarding new customers, and heightened risks of illicit crime and fraud.

The first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns this spring especially stretched financial institutions’ regulatory compliance departments to their limits, said Patrick Gerard Dahill, head of AML and financial crime recruitment at Barclay Simpson, in London.…

TEXT fraud is maybe more dangerous that email fraud, given the tendency for mobile phone users to respond to texts swiftly and without careful thought, cyber-security experts warn.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also created opportunities for fraudsters using texts and messaging services such as WhatsApp to launch fishing and other attacks on the unwary.…

GRAPHENE, a form of carbon, formed into a single layer of atoms arranged in two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, has been hailed as a super-material – highly conductive (heat and power), strong, stable, and absorbent of light and liquid. It is the latter quality that has caught the eye of the petroleum sector, with graphene being used to help clean up oils spills.…

Few countries could claim to have weathered Covid-19 well but Singapore, micro-managed and highly-educated, is high on the shortlist. Even so, Covid-19 has had a detrimental effect on the southeast Asian city state’s paints and coatings sector and its impacts continue to linger.…

Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal is one of the largest ever embezzlement and money laundering cases, with Malaysian courts considering how at least USD4.5 billion was stolen and then spent or laundered from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has now been convicted of charges associated with the scandal.…