SG Morning Highlights | Singapore's Q2 business outlook deteriorates for fifth consecutive quarter: Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau

Advancers / Decliners is 107 to 25, with 58.40 million securities worth S$77.29 million changing hands.

The Federal Reserve is seen raising its benchmark rate a quarter of a percentage point next week and again in May, as a government report showed US inflation remained high in February, and concerns of a long-lasting banking crisis eased.

Prices of fed funds futures after the report reflected solid bets on an increase in the benchmark rate to a 4.75 per cent-5 per cent range at the Fed's March 21-22 meeting, with about a 15 per cent chance seen of no change. By May the benchmark rate is seen rising further to a range of 5.00 per cent-5.25 per cent.

Until late last week financial markets had been pricing in a bigger half-point rate hike to stem persistently high inflation.

Singapore's business outlook for Q2 2023 has continued to deteriorate, dragged down by poor sentiment in manufacturing and trade. Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau's (SCCB) business optimism index (BOI) for Q2 2023 fell further to +4.6 percentage points from +4.73 percentage points the previous quarter, and from +5.35 percentage points for Q2 2022.

SCCB is a subsidiary under credit and risk information solutions provider, Credit Bureau Asia. Its BOI is released quarterly as a measure of business confidence in the economy.

On Tuesday (Mar 14), SCCB said this represented the fifth consecutive quarter of declining local business sentiment, albeit slight.

The company behind the ChatGPT app that churns out essays, poems or computing code on command released on Tuesday a long-awaited update of its artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

GPT-4 has been widely awaited ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late November, wowing users with its capabilities that were based on an older version of OpenAI's technology, known as a large language model.

"We've created GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI's effort in scaling up deep learning," a company blog said, adding that the AI technology "exhibits human-level performance" on some professional and academic tasks.

The buildings sit on contiguous freehold land and have been held for long-term investment.

Their disposal is part of Ho Bee Land's capital recycling strategy and is in the ordinary course of business, said the group on Wednesday (Mar 15).

This is despite the company making HK$854.4 million (S$146.7 million) in profit in the previous FY.

This comes as the group's share of results of joint ventures may be a loss of about HK$50 million for the financial year, versus a profit of HK$242.9 million in FY2021.

Boustead Singapore said as at 6 pm on Tuesday, it has garnered 87.88 per cent of the total number of shares in its mainboard-listed real estate subsidiary.

This was more than 1 per cent higher than a day ago, when the total number of shares owned, controlled or agreed to be acquired by Boustead Singapore and its concert parties as well as valid acceptances of the offer stood at 86.82 per cent.

This is the outcome of the application which the subcontractor had lodged in respect of a claim for about S$1.28 million. Singapore Mediation Centre is a provider of alternative dispute resolution services.

Addressing the next steps, the company on Tuesday said Soil-Build, among other things, intends to seek recovery of the adjudicated amount from the subcontractor, and is working with its legal advisers, Allen & Gledhill, to initiate the appropriate dispute resolution process.