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Senin, 22 Agustus 2022

Singapore office rents set to hit pre-pandemic levels - Financial Times

Singapore office rents are set to hit pre-pandemic levels for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, as Chinese companies lead a rush to expand operations in the city-state.

The return of workers to the office this year, coupled with lockdowns in China and restrictions in Hong Kong that have forced foreign companies to consider alternative locations, pushed rents for prime office space in the city centre to S$10.74 (US$7.71) per square foot in the second quarter, according to real estate group JLL.

Rents rose 2.7 per cent compared with the previous quarter, meaning landlords in the Asian financial hub have enjoyed five consecutive quarters of growth, according to the data.

“Our forecast is that it will hit S$11 by the end of the year and rise another 25 per cent by 2026,” said Regina Lim, head of strategic advisory for JLL’s Asian capital markets business.

Rising rents have benefited Singapore’s developers and office tower owners. Shares in GuocoLand, the developer of Guoco Midtown, a new development in the city centre due to be finished this year, have risen 7 per cent year to date. Guoco Midtown has secured leases for 30 per cent of the property, agents said. The share prices of other listed real estate investment trusts with a focus on the office sector, including CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust and Suntec Reit, have risen this year off the back of higher incomes and signing rents for their Singapore offices.

The second-quarter numbers were just 0.6 per cent short of the S$10.81 per sq ft recorded at the end of 2019, with the Singapore market outperforming rival Asian financial centres including Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Chinese fast fashion group Shein signed a lease in the first quarter of this year, and the company’s founder and a number of staff moved to Singapore and took prime office space in Marina Bay Financial Centre.

Chinese internet group Alibaba bought a stake in a central office tower in 2020 to house its international headquarters. Plans to redevelop the building into what could become the city’s tallest skyscraper were approved last month.

Rival Chinese technology companies ByteDance and Tencent have also explored further expansion in Singapore, according to two people with knowledge of the companies’ plans.

Singapore has long been a desirable location for foreign companies to establish Asian headquarters because of its low tax rates, strong rule of law and geopolitical neutrality.

The city-state has become even more attractive during the pandemic, as lockdowns in mainland cities and severe restrictions in Hong Kong prompted companies to open offices, said Calvin Yeo, head of office advisory for Knight Frank Singapore.

Sanctions and geopolitical tensions between the US and China have made Singapore’s neutral position more prized.

“If it continues like this we will see even more,” Yeo added.

US technology group Amazon has expanded in the city-state this year, as have US asset manager BlackRock and a number of its European counterparts.

The interest has filtered through to real estate investments. Commercial real estate deals hit a record in the June quarter, jumping 74 per cent to $5.6bn, according to data from MSCI.

Singapore is seen as a more resilient haven compared with other gateway cities in the region, according to Benjamin Chow, who leads MSCI’s research on Asian commercial real estate.

But experts warned that the worsening global growth outlook and inflation could put a ceiling on Singapore’s rental growth. Technology companies, which have dominated leasing deals in the city-state, have suffered steep devaluations this year and announced job cuts.

“For the first half of this year there was definitely a strong sense that corporates wanted to grow here, but with the recent correction I would be a little more cautious about aggressive expansion,” Lim said.

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2022-08-22 04:38:45Z
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Minggu, 21 Agustus 2022

China's Milestone Moment for Markets Now Just a Distant Memory - Bloomberg

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China's Milestone Moment for Markets Now Just a Distant Memory Bloomberg
China’s hyped decoupling from emerging markets may prove a blip South China Morning Post
China’s hyped decoupling from EMs may prove a blip Moneycontrol
China's Hyped Decoupling From Emerging Markets May Prove a Blip Bloomberg
China's hyped decoupling from emerging markets a blip The Star Online
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2022-08-22 01:48:00Z
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Sabtu, 20 Agustus 2022

Safety concerns loom as writers show public support for Rushdie - CNA

While the death sentence, or fatwa, ordered on Rushdie by Iran was among the most high-profile threats, many authors say harassment and calls for violence have become part of the experience of being a writer.

Love Is An Ex-Country author Randa Jarrar said in an email interview this week that she had to learn how to "better aim a gun" and prepare physically in case of attack after a tweet about former first lady Barbara Bush prompted threats.

When Bush died in 2018, Jarrar described her as an "amazing racist" for a comment about the majority-Black communities displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

The Muslim author said she feared for her life when critics posted her home address and phone number online. She and her child began receiving death threats.

Every threat she received mentioned that she is Muslim and warned her to go back to where she came from, Jarrar said. She moved, and hired a company to scrub her private data from the internet.

Queer Chicana writer Myriam Gurba faced threats after she criticised author Jeanine Cummins in 2020 of cultural appropriation in writing the novel American Dirt, which focused on a Mexican woman who escaped a drug cartel to build a new life in the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

Gurba said many people supported her, but she also received threats of violence on her phone and the internet.

"The first death threat that I received stated that the police should execute me for my stupidity,” she said.

This week, police in Scotland said they were investigating a threat against Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling following her tweet voicing concern for Rushdie.

At least one upcoming literary festival is tightening security. Organisers of September's National Book Festival, hosted by the Library of Congress in Washington, had already planned to require bag searches.

Now, the festival is working with law enforcement to add extra measures, a spokesperson said.

At the New York Public Library, some writers said they did not fear gathering in public.

"The only time I got anxious was when they told us how much security there was going to be, thinking maybe there have been some threats, but I doubt it,” author Paul Auster said.

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2022-08-20 05:17:00Z
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Jumat, 19 Agustus 2022

‘Boomerang employees’ are going back to the old jobs they quit - Yahoo

By Charlie Wells

(Bloomberg) —Forget return to office. In this economy, many employees are returning to previous employers, breaking taboos about workplace loyalty and bucking assumptions about the so-called Great Resignation.

Their numbers are up. In the US in the first quarter of this year, 4.2% of all new hires for companies that advertised jobs on LinkedIn were boomerangs, compared to 3.3% in 2019, the social-media firm said.

Their reasons for returning are varied. What’s more, their returns are being brandished by firms large and small, who are boasting everywhere from social media to Slack that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

So-called “boomerang employees” embody the economic ambiguity of the moment. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the US labour market added 528,000 jobs in July, beating forecasts more than twofold. Yet just the week prior, data showed that the US economy shrank for a second straight quarter, amplifying concerns about a recession.

All the while, employees and employers are locked in a standoff over perks, pay, remote policies and the very meaning of work itself.

Return Perks

“I just realised that startups don’t really offer a lot of family benefits that larger companies do,” said Rachel Bentley, a 31-year-old from Austin, Texas, who recently boomeranged back to Duo, a two-factor authentication company owned by Cisco Systems Inc., after stints at Microsoft Corp. and a smaller startup she joined in 2021.

It was a mix of cultural comfort, pay and concern about the economy that drew Bentley back to Duo, whose employees she stayed in touch with on Slack even after she left the firm. It paid off: Bentley says by returning, she was not only able to rejoin colleagues she loves, but also double her pay.

Others are doing the same, particularly at a moment when career risks — such as joining a startup in a new industry — may begin to lose their appeal. Although the job market is still strong, firms that once seemed like surefire bets in a stay-at-home economy are laying off staff or freezing hiring.

In June, crypto firm Coinbase Global Inc. said it would lay off 18% of its workforce. Robinhood Markets Inc. said this month it would eliminate nearly a quarter of its staff. Even Apple Inc. laid off many of its contract-based recruiters, and firms from Peloton Interactive Inc. to LinkedIn Corp. have also recently shed staff.

That may partly explain the recent growth of boomerang employees.

“The hard reality is that at 30, 40, or even 50, it’s really hard to change careers and maintain the lifestyle you’re used to,” said Adam Kail, founder and chief executive officer of Harrison Gray Search and Consulting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I’ve seen people switch careers drastically but in a short period of time realize, ‘I’m not as happy doing something I like more, but with my pay a third of what it was before.’”

Manager Approval

In contrast to decades past, firms are now happy to take their old employees back. And they aren’t being quiet about it. LinkedIn is filled with posts from companies including Deutsche Bank AG, EY and Deloitte touting returning employees, often with elaborate blog posts, pictures and videos showing happy staff back at their companies.

“On social media, you can very easily click back in and say, ‘Hey, I’d love to talk to someone again about maybe reengaging in employment with the firm,” says Dan Black, EY’s global leader for talent attraction and acquisition.

Social-media posts from boomerangs can help with recruitment in a still-tight labour market by showing the firm is a good place to work, according to Catherine Shea, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business who co-authored a 2021 study on returning employees.

But Shea and her team found that boomerangs come with a cost. They analysed two groups of employees at a US professional services firm: Workers who had boomeranged and similar workers who had never left. They found that boomerangs were paid more but performed on a similar level as employees who stayed. Still, boomerangs tended to spend more time on long-term projects, which might benefit firms because it indicates they have a deeper level of commitment to the company.

Matthew Wragg, CEO of engineering and tech recruitment firm Gattaca, says he’s hired six boomerang employees in the past three months.

“You’ve got that cultural cognizance,” he says. “They know the culture. They know the operating processes.”

They also tend to change little between their first and second tours of the company, according to a study that John Arnold of the University of Missouri conducted with a team of other researchers. They examined some 30,000 boomerang and traditional employees over eight years. They found that in general, employees who performed well in their first stints also performed well in their second. Those who underperformed at first continued to underperform when they returned.

Staging a Comeback

This is why companies considering bringing back a boomerang candidate need to investigate carefully why he or she left in the first place, says Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at recruiter Robert Half. Red flags might be dissatisfaction with upward mobility, concerns about management, or poor cultural fit. Those issues are unlikely to have changed in the interim. On the other hand, salary, benefits and non-monetary perks are all issues that can be solved, within reason.

Candidates looking to boomerang should carefully consider whether going back to an old employer is the right move, says Mark Royal, a senior director at consultant Korn Ferry. Some may look to jump back too soon without giving their new jobs enough of a try.

Those who do decide to jump back should cast their time away in a positive light, he says.

“You want to be framing it in terms of what you’ve learned in the role you’re now leaving and what you can bring back to your former employer and why that will be valuable for you both,” says Royal.

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2022-08-19 04:05:32Z
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Tesla Must Make Cars Locally, Not Just Batteries, Jokowi Says - Bloomberg

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2022-08-18 23:00:00Z
1537654520

Indonesia May Impose Nickel Export Tax This Year, President Jokowi Says - Bloomberg

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2022-08-18 22:30:00Z
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Rabu, 17 Agustus 2022

More Japanese firms are raising wages to combat labour shortage: Reuters poll - CNA

TOKYO: More large Japanese companies are now raising wages to attract workers and cope with chronic staff shortages, a monthly Reuters poll showed on Thursday (Aug 18), a tentative sign Japan Inc may be slowly addressing pay that has been flat for decades.

Still, the Corporate Survey found that higher wages are not yet the go-to tactic for companies, with digitalisation seen as the most popular among the multiple measures firms say they are using to address the labour crunch.

Japanese companies have typically avoided boosting wages because decades of deflation made it difficult to pass on higher costs to consumers.

That might now be changing, as the double whammy of higher commodities prices and a weaker yen drive up living costs, and highlight the strain on workers. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has also called on companies to hike wages.

"Overall we are facing labour shortages and we are struggling to lure part-timers at stores in particular. We are responding by raising wages but there's a limit," the manager of a wholesaler wrote in the survey, on condition of anonymity.

The poll of 495 big non-financial firms, taken Aug 2 to 12, highlighted what appeared to be a growing willingness by companies to increase wages.

The hiking of wages or starting salaries was picked by 44 per cent of respondents as one of the multiple tactics they were adopting.

That compared to just 25 per cent of companies that said in a 2017 Corporate Survey that they would increase salaries.

A full 59 per cent picked going digital and other measures to save manpower as one of their tactics.

"The tide is changing as labour shortages have prompted more and more companies to raise wages albeit gradually," said Koya Miyamae, a senior economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.

"Now is just the beginning, as the population increasingly ages and dwindles, the momentum to hike wages will gather steam," he said.

A majority of companies, 54 per cent, said they faced a labour crunch with the shortage most pronounced among non-manufacturers, 59 per cent of which said they were squeezed for staffing.

"We have not been able to do anything" to secure workers, said another manager at a wholesaler.

Companies also called for a better working environment, including year-round hiring and delaying retirement to encourage the elderly to work until their later years.

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2022-08-17 23:08:00Z
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