Keppel’s profit quadruples to historic high of $4.1 billion
Keppel reported its highest-ever profit on the back of rising recurring income and gains from the disposal of its offshore marine unit.
The group posted a full-year net profit of $4.1 billion for the 12 months to Dec 31, 2023, bolstered by some $3.2 billion net profit from the divestment of Keppel O&M and another $996 million from continuing operations.
This marks a quadrupling from financial year 2022’s profit of $927 million.
DPM Lawrence Wong to deliver Budget speech on Feb 16
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong will deliver Singapore’s Budget 2024 at 3.30pm on Feb 16 in Parliament.
The Budget statement will be broadcast live on free-to-air TV channels and radio, said the Ministry of Finance (MOF), government feedback unit Reach and the People’s Association (PA) on Thursday.
Key announcements from the Budget statement will be updated on MOF’s social media and messaging platforms – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and WhatsApp.
Shopee Singapore fails to stop former exec from joining TikTok parent company
E-commerce firm Shopee Singapore has failed in court to prevent its former senior employee from joining rival ByteDance, which operates TikTok and TikTok Shop.
Justice Kwek Mean Luck dismissed the platform’s claims to seek interim injunctions to prevent Mr Lim Teck Yong from accepting employment with ByteDance, and to prevent him from soliciting its clients and employees.
Justice Kwek also did not grant Shopee its alternative claim to seek a springboard injunction – which prevents former employees from benefitting from unfair advantage – to restrain Mr Lim from accepting employment with any of Shopee’s competitors.
Tengah residents welcome new bus stops, hope for more bus services
A new bus stop was installed on Dec 24, 2023 in front of Block 132B in the Plantation Grange project in Tengah, where bus service 992 connects residents to amenities in Bukit Batok, as well as the bus interchange.
Another new bus stop directly opposite Plantation Village, which is served by bus service 870 that goes to Jurong Town Hall bus interchange, was also opened in December, the Housing Board said.
A new signalised pedestrian crossing linking residents to this bus stop was introduced on Jan 26.
SAF regular gets 10 months’ jail over sex act with underage girl
A Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) regular was sentenced to 10 months’ jail on Thursday over a sex act with a 15-year-old girl in December 2021.
Subramaniam Thaburan Rangasamy, 50, and the Sec 3 student met at a multi-storey carpark, where she had a fall and Subramaniam helped her. After they chatted for a while, the two became intimate and the girl then performed a sex act on him.
On Dec 8, 2021, the girl made a police report because she felt that Subramaniam had taken advantage of her.
Job hopping at its lowest in 6 years as it’s harder to get new post
Jumping ship has gone out of fashion among local workers as only 14.7 per cent of workers changed jobs in the past two years, a rate not seen since 2017.
The fall in job change was seen across all age groups and across industries, noted a Ministry of Manpower survey.
Workers aged 25 to 29 continued to change employers most frequently. About 13.9 per cent of this cohort had moved in the 12 months up to June 2023, compared with 5.5 per cent for workers in their 50s and 3.7 per cent for those over 60.
