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The financial center is ramping up its efforts to boost the appeal of the stock market by lobbying Singapore’s biggest tech companies to list in the city-state, saying it is their “national duty”.
Over the past year, exchange officials have stepped up efforts to persuade Singapore-based companies, including tech conglomerate Bahir and Super Up Grab, to return after completing initial public offerings in the U.S., people familiar with the discussions said.
Officials have already floated the benefits of a secondary listing on the Singapore Stock Exchange as an opportunity to be included in local stock indexes and benefit from additional fund flows, one of the people said. But recently, the company has been under pressure to fulfill its “national duty” to the city-state.
While it has emerged in recent years as a financial hub for tech companies such as Bahr, which owns ecommerce app Shopee and popular online games, Singapore’s patriotic pitch underscores its struggle to attract more high-profile figures to the stock exchange. Free fire.
Following similar steps in Hong Kong, Chinese tech companies Bahr and Grab are considering share sales to come home. But the SGX has been mired in low trading volumes and accounting scandals that prompted its delisting, and this year’s global tech market crash has dampened interest in following another watershed.
A financial industry expert in Singapore said there has been an apparent effort to pressure overseas-listed businesses since earlier this year.
The ride-hailing and food delivery app, which completed a $40 billion listing in New York in December, is also being targeted, the person said. The merger with a special purpose acquisition company was the largest globally.
In the year Closer to the sea, a $39.8 billion business launched in New York in 2017, SGX officials have requested frequent meetings with the company every few months.
Singapore’s attractive offensive comes after a handful of start-ups in neighboring Indonesia chose to list locally for their IPOs. Jakarta lured businesses away from developed markets for looser rules, such as allowing two-tier shareholdings to give founders more control over their companies.
“We want to express our appreciation to the Indonesian government,” said Andre Solistio, CEO of GoTo, the country’s largest tech startup that listed in Jakarta in April. . . Their continued commitment to the development of Indonesia’s digital economy”
But the person close to Sea said the company is unlikely to bow to pressure from Singapore. In May last year, Bahr was allowed to enter the MSCI Singapore Companies Index after the index provider said foreign-listed businesses were eligible.
Like Grab, its shares have fallen by more than three-quarters in the past 12 months.
Yaz & Bahr declined to comment. SGX did not respond to a request for comment.
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