In an opinion piece, Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) chairman Jesmond Gatt, shares his views on how Apac's financial community can work closer together with Malta, including across digital assets, insurance and family offices.

If approved, the fund will become the first private credit infrastructure fund to be listed on HKEX. The fund invests in assets across renewables, power, utilities, data centres, telecommunications, transport, healthcare and accommodation.

As tokenised assets surge, institutions, innovators and regulators, are converging to rewrite how global capital moves, including in Apac, according to a high-level panel discussion at Token2049 in Singapore.

The proposal values the group at $4.2bn and will involve delisting from the Singapore Exchange. Alibaba and Ant Group have agreed to buy 13 floors of Mandarin Oriental's new Hong Kong office building One Causeway Bay; the group is expanding in Seoul.

CEO Darren Wang described the process to FA as “difficult” and said that reaching out to more US-based private investors, while expanding globally, is the next step.

After a deluge of defaults, a new state-owned bank called United Islamic Bank is set to emerge out of the five banks, with the plan to privatise them over time.

Hari Janakiraman, head of industry and innovation, transaction banking at ANZ, discussed legal frameworks, digital standards and tokenisation pilots, including Australia's Project Acacia, with FA in an exclusive interview.

The Equity Market Development Plan has helped boost IPOs and valuations this year, including SGX's appeal for secondary listings, such as US data firm AvePoint. FA spoke with experts at Cooley and Grasshopper Asia.

The US administration wants to take retaliatory action for China’s rare earth export controls. US stock markets and cryptocurrencies lost billions of dollars in value on October 9, while gold has reached $4,000 an ounce. China's commerce ministry said "we aren't afraid to fight".

Adam Zhang, managing director of Collabrium Partners, shares his views with FA on how Chinese companies are changing their approach to cross-border M&A, including finding opportunities in Southeast Asia and in technology.