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The article looks at how the government-engineered slowdown of Singapore's housing market has led to fewer opportunities for real estate agents causing many to take part-time jobs with driving services. Particular attention is given to how smartphone-centric ride-hailing companies such as Uber Technologies have given agents job opportunities as well as networking opportunities for property leads.

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore Efficiency Even Extends to Its Bankruptcy Laws: Gadfly (Correct) Pity Ezra couldn't have waited a bit longer, because quite soon, similar protection will be available in Singapore, and perhaps will even come with some enhancements. Perhaps more importantly for companies like Ezra, or other oil services firms with operations outside of the city-state, Singapore's court decisions will now be extra-territorial. [Extracted from the article]

Based on government data for January and February, it would take almost six months of total property sales in China to clear the inventories on the books of listed developers. China Evergrande Group, the largest private developer in the world, tops the list with $18.3 billion in investment properties at the end of June, followed by China Resources Land Ltd., with $11.6 billion. Inventories equivalent to six months of sales and a bulge in investment properties are bad signs. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Grab the Defibrillator, China's Going to Need It: Gadfly The borrrowing bank also deposits some securities in treasury for the lending institution as a guarantee it will return the money tomorrow. [Extracted from the article]

A credit-rating cut by Moody's Investors Service has prompted equity and debt investors to take another close look at Chinese car rental business Car Inc. While UCAR is the parent of Car Inc. (having earlier been a subsidiary), the shareholdings run in both directions. If such an equity raising can boost its valuation, then that also opens UCAR to the possibility of down rounds -- and Car Inc. to future fair-value losses. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- How China Evergrande's Borrowing Time (and Time Again): Gadfly The move comes only three days after Evergrande got holders of its outstanding offshore bonds to relax constraints on how much debt the company can assume. Sure, some of this debt has fueled growth that has helped make Evergrande the largest private developer in the world by assets. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Fairytale-Ending Hopes Fade for This Thai Penny Stock: Gadfly (Correct) These borrowers are also shareholders of the company and have pledged their shares in the company against those loans with the company's subsidiary in Singapore. In simple terms, Group Lease was lending to its subsidiaries and, as a guarantee for those loans, was receiving its own stock. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Noble Group Is Up for Sale, If You Believe Its Bond Docs: Gadfly The language in Noble's latest bond-sale document is similar to its previous ones, so it may be that the lawyers just forgot to update that clause. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore's Stock Rally Looks to Be Floating on Foam: Gadfly A string of restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings was capped last week with reports that distress at oil-services company Ezra Holdings Ltd. has deepened. While higher oil prices and a doubling of the Baltic Dry Index suggest the outlook may be looking less bad, that doesn't mean shipbuilders and rig makers are out of the danger zone yet. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- There's More Equity in China, But a Lot of It's Debt: Gadfly China's debt problems are old news, but several analysts in Asia have been telling me that the world is ignoring the amount of equity that's been added to balance sheets of late. If preferred stock is added to debt and divided by common equity, things look a lot more worrying: There's on average $1.65 in obligations that pay fixed coupons for every $1 of shares in Chinese companies. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Bullies Beware, Noble's Gang May Have Some Heavyweights: Gadfly Noble Group, the Singapore-listed commodity trader, remains a favorite target of short sellers. Tormentors will remember what happened to Olam International Ltd., another Singapore-listed trader that was a target of short-sellers until the state-owned investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte took a larger stake in the company and returned the bruising. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Winklevoss Bitcoin Bet Is a Countdown to Zero -- or Less: Gadfly In spite of employing lawyer Kathleen Moriarty, a legend in the ETF world, the Winklevosses have been forced to wait since July 2013 as the regulator takes its time to determine whether the digital currency can be considered an asset class. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Watch Those Beijing Winks for Clues on Chinese Stocks: Gadfly Even if you disregard that fundamental strength, heed Beijing's hints that politicians wouldn't mind a controlled stock market rally. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore Builders Will Be the Next Cause for Bank Pain: Gadfly Investors bemoaning Singapore banks' fraught relationship with oil-services companies may be overlooking another brewing area of trouble -- building and construction firms. Average days payable outstanding, a measure of how long a company takes to reimburse its suppliers, has risen to 104 from six two years ago, based on data from 16 publicly traded firms in the industry tracked by Bloomberg. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- The Complacency of Some Stock Investors Is Breathtaking: Gadfly Stock Investors' Breathtaking Complacency This divergence has pushed the so-called complacency index, which relates the ratio between enterprise value and Ebitda in the MSCI World Index to the VIX, to its highest level in at least two decades. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Fear and Lending Stalk Singapore Banks Buoyed by Mirage: Gadfly "Given the current economic environment, obviously, a lot of banks are competing for high quality net interest margins which is why -- the same space we're in -- which is why the credit spread, we do expect that to continue to tighten". [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore Banks Should Brace for a New Sort of Pain: Gadfly It's all about a bank's specific allowance for bad debt, which is calculated by determining how much of a loan is delinquent and then netting out what a lender expects to recover by either confiscating and selling collateral or by helping the company to remain operational. And as the charter continues to have a shorter period, the discounted net cash flow value becomes more and there is a gap between the loan amount and that will take it into specific provisions as well". [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Asia's Junk Heart Is at Risk of a China Cardiac Arrest: Gadfly So high-yield bond money managers are buried in high-risk China debt up to their necks. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore's Staid REITs Will Have to Mate or Die: Gadfly Singapore's real estate investment trusts became popular because they had the things local investors love -- steady income, high yields and property. Smartkarma analyst Crispin Francis pointed out in a note last week that six industrial-property REITs recognized a collective drop in the value of their assets of S$296.3 million ($208.5 million) in 2016, enough to wipe out all the gains they booked since 2012. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Bitcoin Is Starting to Behave Like a Grown-Up Market: Gadfly The cryptocurrency dropped 7.8 percent on Thursday after news that the People's Bank of China threatened to shut exchanges that violate money-laundering rules. The quarterly contract sold at Bitmex entered backwardation -- the future price fell below the spot price -- in January, shortly after the PBOC started cracking down on the exchanges. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Aramco's Smart to Pick Moelis. Now Comes the Fee Squeeze: Gadfly Fees for Petrobras's IPO averaged about 0.65 percent of the amount raised, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Goldman Forces India's Central Bank to Choose Its Spice: Gadfly The central bank will have to decide whether to let the Masala bond market die slowly or gain new life in a different form than was envisaged when it allowed Indian companies to raise debt in rupees overseas. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- JPMorgan Cracking China Bonds Is Great News... for China: Gadfly That the biggest U.S. bank is about to get more active onshore in China is great news... for China. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore Is Wrestling With Corporate Life Support: Gadfly (Correct) In their enthusiasm to get a result, bondholders and banks are pushing companies into liquidation, the worst outcome for all stakeholders. Banks in the U.S. are also more used to dealing with trouble, so they know it's best to reach an agreement with the (less numerous and savvier) bondholders than to send the company into liquidation. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Mongolian Bonds May Look a Winner Now, But at What Cost? Bond investors can sometimes be too sanguine, and Mongolia looks to be an example of that. Investors are taking a more optimistic view, betting the International Monetary Fund will finalize a rescue package that will allow the payment to be made and give Mongolia sufficient credibility to sell new bonds to meet other maturities -- there's about $645 million coming due in 2018. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Don't Believe Options Traders. The city's Hang Seng Index ended January up 6.2 percent, its best performance for that month since 2012, as investors continued to bet on reflationary policies by President Donald Trump. [Extracted from the article]

All-Japan Deals Look Too Cozy: Gadfly TIHT is asking the court to review the price Nippon Life Insurance Co. paid for a stake in Mitsui Life Insurance Co., arguing that it was too low. [Extracted from the article]

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has rallied 5.6 percent this year, on course for its best January since 2012. The investigations have embroiled Samsung Electronics Co., which has the biggest weighting in both the Kospi local stock gauge and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. In fact, when the MSCI Emerging Markets Index is broken down by sector, materials, which includes mining and commodities firms, and information technology are the two stand outs. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Bitcoin Freedom Lovers, Say Thanks to China's Communists: Gadfly Bitcoin investors can thank China for popping a bubble in the digital currency. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Friends Can Be Costly, as This Asian Firm Might Find Out: Gadfly Indonesian mining contractor PT Bukit Makmur Mandiri Utama, or Buma, is wrapping up investor meetings Thursday with an eye to selling as much as $500 million in dollar bonds. For an attractive enough yield, bond investors may be willing to turn a blind eye to Buma's connections. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Asian Bond Buyers Must Stop Handing Out Blank Checks: Gadfly Issuers in the region have been particularly vague -- almost half of the dollar debentures sold by nonfinancial companies were for "general corporate purposes". [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Singapore Little Guys Won Today, But Watch the Puppeteer: Gadfly Activist fund managers are becoming more popular in Asia, and in Singapore at least, minority shareholders are hitching a ride. Fan Kow Hin, a controlling shareholder of IHC, is also the single biggest stakeholder in Healthway Medical Corp., which might help to explain why the two companies tried, unsuccessfully, to merge last year. [Extracted from the article]