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Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
ASEAN Sovereign AI in 2026: Models, Compute, and the Regulatory Patchwork
Singapore is buying TPU access while building SEA-LION, Indonesia is shipping Sahabat-AI in five languages, Thailand is scaling Typhoon, Malaysia is funding chips, Vietnam is exporting PhoGPT, and Manila has finally passed an AI Act, but the United States Diffusion Rule and a fragmented data sovereignty regime put a ceiling on the regional ambition.
Across 2025 and into 2026, every large ASEAN economy moved from announcement to delivery on sovereign artificial intelligence. Singapore is executing the December 2023 National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0) under AI Singapore (AISG), with the SEA-LION family now in its third generation and a S$1 billion Strategic AI Compute fund underwriting...
Hong Kong Six Years After the National Security Law, Cumulative Financial Sector Reckoning
Six years past the June 2020 NSL and two years past Article 23, Hong Kong's IPO market has collapsed by three quarters from its 2010 peak, while the HKD peg, Stock Connect, and offshore RMB plumbing have absorbed the shock with surprising resilience.
Hong Kong in 2026 looks nothing like 2019, yet its core financial plumbing has held under unique stress. The June 2020 National Security Law and March 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (Article 23) reshaped political risk pricing, with measurable effects across IPO listings, professional services, and family office domicile. H...
Hong Kong vs Singapore in 2026: The Head to Head for Asian Wealth, IPOs, and Connectivity
Hong Kong is back on the front foot with a thawing IPO market, an expanded dual counter regime, and deeper Connect schemes, while Singapore consolidates a 1,650 family office complex and a maturing Variable Capital Company stack. The two centers are no longer interchangeable.
Hong Kong enters 2026 with the strongest cyclical tailwind in three years. HKEX raised about USD 11 billion across 71 new listings in 2024, the 2025 calendar trended materially higher behind Midea's secondary listing, SF Holding's H share float, and the ZX consumer technology pipeline, and the HKD RMB Dual Counter Model has expanded to co...
Singapore as a Financial Hub in 2026: Family Offices, Asset Management, and Tokenization
The republic enters 2026 with deeper wealth pools, a maturing Variable Capital Company regime, and a tokenization agenda that is moving from pilot to production, even as competition with Hong Kong intensifies.
Singapore enters 2026 as the dominant private wealth and asset management center in Asia outside Greater China, with assets under management approaching SGD 6 trillion, more than 2,000 single family offices licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and a Variable Capital Company population exceeding 1,300. Project Guardian has shif...
Singapore After Succession: The Wong Government, the SGD NEER Frame, and the Wealth Hub Stress Test
Lawrence Wong's first electoral mandate hands the 4G a working majority but a narrower legitimacy buffer. The Wong government must defend the wealth hub, ride a 9 percent GST, and price Taiwan tail risk into the SGD NEER band.
The May 2025 general election delivered the People's Action Party a fourth-generation mandate at 65.6 percent of the popular vote and 87 of 97 seats, with the Workers' Party retaining Aljunied, Sengkang, and capturing Punggol. The result is solid by any global comparison and weaker than every PAP showing before 2011. Lawrence Wong inherit...
Singapore as Asia's wealth hub: family offices, AUM, and the post crackdown discipline trade
Singapore's family office surge from roughly 400 to 1,400 between 2020 and 2023 has been recalibrated by the Section 13O and 13U revisions of July 2023, the Stablecoin regime, and the SGD 3 billion money laundering case of August 2023.
Singapore now sits at the centre of the Asian private wealth map. The Monetary Authority of Singapore reports total assets under management of SGD 5.4 trillion at end 2023, up from SGD 4.9 trillion a year earlier, with around 78 percent of mandates sourced from outside Singapore and 89 percent invested outside the city state. Single famil...