Avoiding the grip of Singapore Inc
The island state's government-owned corporations need us more than we need them, writes Eric Ellis. Yet we all know national interest goes both ways
Hot money threatens to scorch Asia again
Just 13 years after the Asian Contagion, Eric Ellis questions whether the region's reforms would prevent another crisis
Asian sirens cast a spell but leave some things to be desired
They're robust and the road to the future, but our nearest and dearest could resolve to do better
The city-state's success as a financial haven for Asia's wealthy is turning sour as GFC fallout enters the courts
IN THE fomenting debate over Singapore Inc's bid to buy a most vital pillar of Australia's economic architecture, there is something deliciously apt that the decisive call on the Australian Stock Exchange will probably be made by Canberra's independent members of Parliament
New evangelical, deal-making networks are tiptoeing to the edges of power in south-east Asia
LIFE'S daily drama that is modern Indonesia can be glibly boiled down to an arm-wrestle between goodies and baddies. The reformist goodies are gathered under the moral and electoral authority of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, now a year into a second five-year term and as popular as ever. Reform is sclerotic, but it is happening and Indonesians are starting to believe that democracy delivers not just a vote, but credible institutions
World turns disapproving eyes on Singapore banquet
WERE every high school as wonderful as Singapore's United World College....
Each morning, a convoy of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, BMWs and SUVs sweep up to the expansive campus, dropping well-shod students dangling all manner of modish teenage bling; mobile phones, computers, designer this and that. The sumptuous grounds are more suggestive of a five-star resort than a secondary school
O brave New Paper that has such people in it
The curtain finally falls on Suharto, with the actors still performing their roles
Singapore: Libel case a test for Murdoch
Dow Jones brought some unwanted baggage with it
Unease grows between Jakarta and Singapore
Resentment and envy still appear to underpin a testy relationship, writes Eric Ellis
Singapore cashes in on a raft of graft
The island state has laid out the welcome mat for Jakarta's dubious tycoons
Web of cash, power and cronies
Singapore isn't just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras on Orchard Road.
It also does a useful trade keeping Burma's military rulers and their cronies afloat
The island state that wishes it could be towed to less murky waters
High stakes for Packer in Singapore
So do James Packer and friends have the elusive "wow factor"?
Thai adventure backfires on Singapore Inc
The fallout from the Thai coup is yet to hit Singapore's Madame Ho
Singapore's budget airlines; Low Cost, High Competition
Chong Phit Lian, the new CEO of Jetstar Asia, a Singapore budget airline, used to run Singapore's mint. That's the last time she was awash in cash
It’s election time in Singapore and the opposition pollies are silent as lawyers wait to pounce. Victory is a formality for the Lee family
Singapore's Temasek is rich, powerful and on the prowl. But it didn't count on the latest backlash from Thailand
Is Ho Ching Losing Her Touch?
East & Eden
For a truly inspiring Asian experience step off the well-trodden path. The top
10 must-visit holiday hotspots
The Battle of the (Very Hot) City-States
Eric Ellis on the background to the hanging in Singapore last week of an Australian drug-dealer
If nothing else, the hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van has shown up the Singapore government for its hypocrisy and barbarism
Hang Democracy, Let's Trade
Singaporeans don't like to be reminded they do business with Burmese narco-traffickers,
and admit they don't mind punishing the innocent to preserve law and order
Singapore seems determined to hang Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van as an act of defiance in the face of international criticism
Blackjack in Singapore? Poker in Pyongyang? Casino operators are hoping to cash in on gambling’s new frontier
Red opportunity makes Singapore complacent again
The name Chen Jiulin doesn't roll off the Western tongue in quite the same manner as Nick Leeson but many Singaporeans see awkward parallels
While Qantas' Geoff Dixon once equated Singapore Inc with the darker quadrants of airspace, he now covets an alliance with its more lucrative enterprise.
As the Howard government struggles to mend fences in Asia, a changing of the guard in Singapore could slow some of the recent progress
Singapore waits to see if son leads like father
SINGAPORE'S national flags are out, so it must be nearing National Day, when the four million people of this disinfected city-state publicly wear patriotism on their sleeves -or draped over the balconies of their state assisted apartments, as the case may be
Australia and Malaysia should be good friends. With Dr Mahathir gone, they may well soon be
TO the Australian eye, Singapore is a strange place whichever way you look at it: Asia Lite, Switzerland-sur-tropiques, neither East nor West, Disneyland with the death penalty, the only shopping centre with a seat at the UN.
Qantas' move into the busy South-East Asia budget air lanes may be $50m well spent or a one-way ticket to shareholder strife
He was one of Mahathir Mohamad's closest business allies. Now a new Prime Minister has cut the mogul down to size
On the surface, things have changed in Singapore, where even bawdy T-shirts are now openly on sale. Underneath, however, it looks like the same old story
Ban on oral sex may be lifted as nanny State goes soft on sin
SINGAPORE'S ban on oral sex, a statute dating from the island's days as a Victorian British colony, looks set to be repealed in another apparent effort by its notoriously strict Government to shake off its nanny-State image.
It became a byword for World War II atrocities but the killing has never stopped at Singapore’s infamous prison, Changi
Indonesia holds a world record that Jakarta doesn’t like to make public: the most pirate-infested seas on the planet
Singapore's New Straits: Piracy on the high seas is on the rise in South-East Asia
Why is the chairman of Singapore's leading telecommunications company buying shares in a rival telco?
Why is Singapore Inc. investing bigtime in its neighbor?
Battling the new millennium bug
All hail SingTel Optus chief, a modest profit
`Inexpensive' may prove costly in litigious Singapore
Ow enjoys excesses of successes
Singapore offers grim view of future terror
Trade Minister Mark Vaile hopes the new free-trade deal with Singapore will spell paydirt for Australia. Eric Ellis reports it may not be such a walk-up start.
SingTel proves a quaint little learner
Singapore Authorities Use Libel Laws to Silence Critics
Singapore: Dragnet in Disneyland
Hey, This Is My Sand! Who's stealing Indonesia's sand?
Line drawn in the sand in Singapore dredger war
Singaporeans to ask what they can do for their country ... or else
A Shot Across Singapore's Bow Dueling Ports
'If we can't add value and offer a superior product at a lower cost, we'll have to lose.'
Asian rivalry turns into
a ship fight
Malaysia is tearing at the very soul of Singapore, Eric Ellis reports from
Tanjung Pelepas
BRITISH royalty aren't the only people who have anni horribiles. Singaporean princelings have them too. Like the one that Lee Hsien Yang, youngest heir to Singapore's self-styled philosopher king Lee Kuan Yew, and SingTel Optus shareholders are having as they grapple with the grim truth that he paid way too much, $14 billion, for Optus.
Airline executives are quick to blame Osama
bin Laden's destructive handiwork for their woes.
United Airlines chief executive officer Jack Creighton - whose airline last week
posted a history-making $4.2 billion loss - is among them; but then he's right
to. Two of his planes were hijacked on September 11, 2001.
However, there's one executive enduring the worst year in his airline's history
who's got no one to blame but himself. His name is Cheong Choong Kong - the
Adelaide University-educated CEO of one of the world's most famous carriers -
Singapore Airlines.
Cheong jumps airline before push
THE crisis in the global airline industry may
have claimed another victim, with the revelation that Singapore Airlines chief
executive Cheong Choong Kong will step down next year.
Stock shock for SingTel
He is the $US30 billion man. But that's not how much Singapore Telecommunications boss Lee Hsien Yang is worth - it's how much shareholder value the company has lost over the past five years.
It's all in the family as No.1 son ascends
The family of Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew has strengthened its grip over the island state with the promotion of eldest son Lee Hsien Loong to the finance ministry.
THERE are a number of certainties in reporting on Asia; that Indonesia will be corrupt, that Japan's most powerful person will not be the prime minister and anything vaguely contentious about ultra-sensitive Singapore will prompt a stern letter of complaint from the government's hyper-sensitive press minders.
Climate control in the Singapore Press
You don't have be a spook to be a Singaporean journalist. But it doesn't hurt.
Eric Ellis reports from a society where the challenge for journalists is testing the undefined boundaries that are so much a part of their culture
In the island state, many hands make elite work
Singapore officials are at pains to insist there is no conspiracy between the Government and the government-owned companies that comprise as much as 60 per cent of the island state's economy.
When Singapore Airlines chief executive Cheong Choong Kong was studying maths and science at Adelaide University and the Australian National University in the early 1960s, he fancied himself as something of a thespian.
Why take the rap when you kill someone if you can pay someone else to take it for you?
Tim Fischer, Australia's former deputy prime minister, likes to remind people of his years of expertise "networking" South-East Asia.
PM chastises Singaporeans behaving badly
A Singaporean in full-flight shopping is a
sight to behold.
On any given weekend, thousands of them can be seen elbowing their way though
the malls and stalls of Johor Baru, the raffish Malaysian border town across the
causeway that separates it from Singapore. While Singapore itself is often
jokingly cited as the only shopping mall with a seat in the United Nations, it
is Malaysian prices that set Singaporeans off.
Even when its interests are separated, or trying to appear separated, Singapore Inc can't help but bump into itself.
Singapore Telecommunications chief executive Lee Hsien Yang is in Sydney this week on a mission - to convince corporate Australia that what it needs is a good dose of Singaporean-style business culture.
A Goode serve of national interest
When you are Charles Goode, a pillar of the Melbourne Establishment, and you've got some friends from Singapore in town, there's really only one place to take them.
SingTel
Heads Down Under
Why the firm's Optus bid could be good for Singapore
A Singaporean forum for political discussion closes its doors
The Singaporean government's fight with Sintercom.org refuses to go away
A plan to regulate political websites is the Singapore government's latest effort to quell dissent in the city-state
Singapore's embarrassing streetside Internet kiosks shut up shop
Asia
Buzz: Sexy Singapore?
Pushing the boundary in the control-minded city-state
If glowing references in a father's widely-read autobiography are any guide to parental favouritism, then Australia's newest telecoms titan is hardly the apple of his daddy's eye
Singapore Telecommunications CEO Lee Hsien Yang isn't a natural gambler.
But in one of the biggest bets of his career-a $7 billion bid for Aussie telephone company Optus-Lee has a lot staked on the outcome: his job, Singapore's prestige, even an exacting father's approval.
The new economy might have been designed in California garages, but a lot of it was built on Singapore assembly lines.
There are three certainties to life Down Under: The beers will be cold, the beaches will be golden, and people will grumble about air travel.
Step aside, Sage of Omaha. You've got big-time competition in Singapore.
Not even the legendary Warren Buffett has made the calls claimed by Singapore's Government Investment Corp.
What's Separating SingTel and Optus? Canberra.
Australia's government has to O.K. the $8 billion telecom takeover. Despite many objections, chances are it will get the nod
Disneyland with the Death Penalty, the only shopping centre with a seat in the United Nations, the Country with a Personality By-pass, Kleenexville - the one-liners come easily about Singapore, Australia's best friend in Asia.
Singapore Airlines needs to lift its game on the Web
Asia
Buzz: Lightening Up
Appearances
aren't always what they seem
Batam's Moment of
Truth
The industrial enclave strives for Singapore's prosperity but inherits
Indonesia's ethnic strife
SingTel's
Connections May Be Costing It Plenty
Now deregulated, Singapore's former phone monopoly is struggling to reassure
investors that its government ties aren't binding
