Singapore’s blue-chip gauge edges down 0.2% amid muted trading

SINGAPORE’s blue-chip gauge, the Straits Times Index (STI), slipped 8.1 points or 0.2 per cent to 3,761.45 amid muted trading on Thursday (Dec 26).

But the city-state’s stock exchange chalked up fewer losers than gainers –144 to 216 – across the broader market, with trading volume and value comparatively lower than usual, at 616.3 million and S$420.9 million, respectively.

Seatrium led the counters on the STI with a gain of 4.1 per cent or S$0.08 to S$2.04, days after it announced on Tuesday that it had won a contract to perform engineering, procurement, construction and onshore commissioning work for a deepwater new-build production unit under BP Exploration & Production, a subsidiary of multinational oil and gas company BP.

Envictus International , a Malaysian food and beverage group, was the most actively traded stock by volume with 38.8 million shares transacted. While the shares closed lower by 2.9 per cent or S$0.01 at S$0.335, they have risen by 15.5 per cent in the year to date.

There was a change of substantial shareholding in the mainboard-listed group, reported on Dec 23, that saw Singaporean “popiah-king” Sam Goi and his private firm Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing divest via off-market transactions their total stake of nearly 30 per cent.

Some stakes were acquired, as shown by regulatory statements on Dec 20, by the substantial shareholder and executive chairman Jaya JB Tan (up from 24.23 per cent to 27.42 per cent, including deemed interest), a Tan Boon Seng (12 per cent) and JAG Capital Holdings. Malaysia’s Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani has a deemed interest of 9.57 per cent by virtue of his shareholding in JAG.