STI ends mostly unchanged; SGX shares jump 5%

SINGAPORE stocks ended Friday broadly unchanged, amid a mixed performance across the region.

The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) closed 3.07 points or 0.12 per cent lower at 2,497.71. Across the market, advancers and decliners were evenly split 202 to 202.

The strongest performing STI component stock by a long way was Singapore Exchange (SGX), which climbed 5.12 per cent to close at S$9.03.

This comes after it announced the listing of the world's largest Chinese pure-government bond exchange-traded fund (ETF), opening a potential avenue of growth in the bourse operator's ETFs business.

The ICBC CSOP FTSE Chinese Government Bond Index ETF will begin trading on Sept 21, with some US$676 million in assets under management.

Goldman Sachs upgraded its call on SGX this week to "buy" from "neutral", on the grounds that its derivatives business will perform better than the market expects.

Goldman raised its price target on the stock to S$10, from S$8.55 previously.

SGX will trade ex for its final dividend of eight Singapore cents per share on Oct 1.

Among the smaller cap stocks, Mermaid Maritime rose 9.8 per cent to S$0.067.

The company, which has a market cap of S$94.7 million, said earlier this week that a wholly-owned unit had exercised a put option on 33.76 per cent stake in Asia Offshore Drilling (AOD) with Seadrill.

The consideration for the disposal of AOD is US$31 million.

Separately, Mermaid also announced that it is forming a joint venture with a unit of Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production PLC to develop robotics and artificial-intelligence technologies to provide commercial subsea engineering services.

For full listings of SGX prices, go to https://www2.sgx.com/