Morning Brief

It has been a distressing week after violent storms uprooted trees in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, resulting in the death of one person whose car was crushed. As a result, DBKL have been directed to establish a task force to closely monitor and maintain these shade trees. Hashim Gombri, a landscape architect consultant, talks about the challenges in preserving old trees in urban environments.

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Typically small cap investing is not without its risk as these companies tend to have less publicly available information with lower trading volumes. But  Lee Meng Horng, Head of Small Cap Research at RHB Investment Bank helps us navigate this on the back of their recently published  Top 20 Small Cap Jewels book.

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Australia tabled its Budget with a second consecutive surplus of A$9.3 billion, quickly followed by a projected deficit of A$28.3 billion in 2024-25. James McIntyre, Economist at Bloomberg Intelligence helps us makes sense of the numbers and also new policies like the "Future Made in Australia" program and the Energy bill relief package.

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With the planned privatization of Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) by a consortium formed by EPF, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, state investment arm of Abu Dhabi, and New York-based investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners; Khair Mirza, Head of Airport Investor Resource at Modalis Infrastructure Partners shares with us what this possible equity restructuring entails and whether it could benefit the nation.

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Recent weeks we have been seeing a series of attacks on Malaysian football players. One of which was the National right winger Faisal Halim that landed in the intensive care unit with fourth-degree burns after being splashed with acid. Dr Hazwan Khair, Head of Sports Medicine, Selangor FC shares with us updates on how Faisal is doing, and what is being done to protect the players.

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The state of Johor is seeing a range of economic opportunities and catalysts the proposed Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, as well as ongoing works on the Forest City Special Financial Zone. We discuss with Nordin Abdullah, Vice Chairman, Malaysia Australian Business Council (MABC) about the right package of incentives to appeal to investors.

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At a staggering pace of approximately 1000 departures per week, New Zealanders are leaving their country. Statistics indicate that a figure of 52,500 citizens migrated in the year, with Australia being a prominent destination. We discuss the factors driving this trend and its implications for the nation with Independent Political Analyst Grant Duncan.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed economist Andrey Belousov as the new defence minister to replace Sergei Shoigu who was at the post since 2012. Shoigu is now head of the country's security council. Dr Alexey Muraviev, Associate Professor at the National Security and Strategic Studies of Curtin University, helps analyse these latest developments.

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The 2024 Presidential elections are shaping up to be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but neither are facing a smooth runway to November. We discuss the headwinds for both camps with pollster John Zogby.

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Over the May holidays in China, tourists made a total of 295 million trips within the country during that 5 day long holiday, 28% more than in 2019. Is this a harbinger of better economic times ahead for China? Gary Ng, APAC Economist, Natixis gives us his perspective and what do the recent PBOC, CPI and PPI numbers tell us.

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