How did the football transfers game get crazy?

IN THE league of extraordinary football players, a fee of 100 million euros (S$159.1 million) is apparently no longer shocking. But as the experience of Barcelona has shown, the crazy rich numbers are becoming unsustainable. The world's most valuable football team can no longer afford its most valuable player.

How did the transfer game go bonkers? In Brunch in The Business Times Weekend, we look at how the football transfer market works, and how the rest of the ecosystem - agents, sponsorships, broadcast rights and, of course, the spending power of ultra-wealthy owners - have inflated values.

Philanthropist Nicole Shanahan is championing "reproductive longevity" - and reckons she may have coined the term. In The Raffles Conversation, she tells why she is pushing the frontiers of female fertility through her Bia-Echo Foundation.

Equity income investors typically look for two things, says this week's Investing With Impact column. One is an attractive yield, and the other is the potential for dividend growth. Research suggests that ESG leaders are more likely than ESG laggards to offer the kind of dividend growth that can mitigate rising inflation as the pandemic recedes and economies recover.

While these are still early days, the digitalisation of Singapore's bond markets is well on its way. SGX's digital asset issuance platform Marketnode has already hosted digital bonds issued by Olam, Singtel and UOB this year. What will this bring for the debt capital markets? The Broad View considers the implications for market participants.

In The Steering Column, our resident petrol head gets to grips with two pocket rockets inspired by the frantic sport of rallying - the Alpine A110 Legende and the Toyota GR Yaris.

Is running your game? OCBC's Sunny Quek shares his sensible approach to mileage, in Fit To Lead.

And on our Health page, a cautionary column on how heart disease can strike the young.

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