What’s Happening in Singapore?
Singapore will celebrate its 60th Birthday in August 2025, and within 6 decades since its founding, it is ranked among the world’s Key Business Hubs with one of the most stable and widely traded currencies. According to Statista, Singapore anticipates reaching a GDP of US$641.8 Billion by 2029 from US$530.71 Billion in 2024.
To achieve this target, the country aims to focus on areas that have a wide international impact, such as driving technological innovation, enhancing infrastructure, strengthening cross-border transactions, and promoting M&A for attractive high-value investment.
Let’s talk about Mergers & Acquisitions for a minute
Given the accelerated state of business growth today, companies worldwide are considering Mergers and Acquisitions as a lucrative expansion method. After reaching a level of maturity, re-inventing the wheel may not always be an ideal consideration. Hence, M&A provides better prospects for growth without having to start from a clean slate.
Considering Singapore, the hub for rapid digital transformation, Mergers and Acquisitions are among the best ways to reach greater heights. They enable companies to collaborate their expertise and resources to achieve economies of scale in their production. In fact, Statista says that the transaction value for M&A will increase to $19.19 billion by the end of 2025.
What does this mean for Singapore?
Considering the recent reports their government has released, Singapore is heading towards substantial technological innovation and workforce development. While there is a plethora of contributing factors, here are three factors that may significantly promote M&A activity in Singapore;
- Economic Diversification of Singapore
- Government Initiatives
- Increase in Cross-Border Transactions
How will these three factors affect Mergers & acquisitions activity in Singapore?
Economic diversifications
Singapore has been expanding into sectors such as healthcare, renewable energy and technology. In its stride to promote technology development, Singapore has invested heavily in the industry and views it as a potent source of growth. A recent report by Rajah & Tann Singapore suggests that Singapore is continuing its investment in multiple areas, including sustainability, digital infrastructure, and artificial intelligence. This draws the interest of several investors to take advantage of growing opportunities that align with global megatrends.
The focus on sustainability drives the initiative to use Electric Vehicles, which creates new M&A opportunities. It is beneficial for both start-ups and established businesses to shift their focus to EV batteries and EV charging infrastructure for rapid expansion.
Government initiatives
The Economic Development Board of Singapore actively promotes foreign investment and partnerships through the M&A scheme. According to a report by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), the scheme offers a 25% M&A Allowance on a $40 million purchase consideration. A double tax deduction is also allowed on transaction costs of $100,000 for qualifying share acquisitions.
Through this, Singapore intends to create a thriving environment for M&A and global connectivity to boost its economy. The Government of Singapore has also implemented initiatives for Start-ups, Smart Nations, and Sustainability. This gives rise to a culture where digital transformation occurs, and firms are considering M&A to introduce new ideas.
Cross-Border Transactions
The Government of Singapore has been taking proactive measures in fostering an environment that significantly promotes Cross-border M&A activities. Singapore acts as a Gateway to Southeast Asia, which allows it to foster stronger bonds for cross-border transactions thereby expanding M&A activity in the Asia-Pacific region.
Recently, Singapore & Malaysia signed an agreement to create an SEZ in Johor with the aim of attracting global investments in sectors like Manufacturing, Aerospace, and Healthcare. It is expected that this agreement will create opportunities for about 20,000 skilled jobs within 5 years.
Considering the above three factors, it is safe to say that 2025 is planned as a lucrative year for Singapore. With substantial activity around Mergers & Acquisition, it is crucial for enterprises to pro-actively invest in a platform that is becomes a Single Source of Truth for all their information.
As M&A transactions become more complex, secure and efficient data management is essential. Virtual Data Rooms (VDRs) have emerged as a critical solution, streamlining the M&A process by enabling secure document sharing, seamless collaboration, and enhanced due diligence
Let’s talk Deals: Why are Mergers & Acquisition carried out through a Modern Virtual Data Rooms?
M&A processes require streamlined due diligence to establish effective buyer, seller, and advisor collaboration. Virtual Data Room (VDR) is integral in revolutionizing how confidential information is shared, managed, and analyzed. Here’s how it works;
Centralized Repository for Information
VDR acts as a centralized repository that stores significant documents such as contracts, legal records, financial statements, and contracts. What makes VDR the go-to platform for M&A deals, is the ease with which it categorizes information and acts as a single source of truth of all stakeholders.
Enhanced Security and Confidentiality
Needless to say, when talking about M&A Deals, we’re also talking about high-risk & high-value transactions. To ensure that sensitive documents included during this process remain secure and don’t fall prey to any breaches, a highly secure Virtual Data Room solution is required. Along with seamless collaboration between stakeholders, a modern VDR restricts unauthorized data sharing and modification to maintain the parties’ confidentiality. With further security features, it protects the information through encryption, watermarking, multi-language support and audit trials, preventing interception or unauthorized downloads.
Accelerating Due Diligence
The most crucial stage of an M&A deal is the due diligence. During this process, the buyer has to scrutinize a plethora of sensitive documents to ensure their investment is secure. Modern VDR platforms provide a revolutionary feature – “Due Diligence Checklist” – that enables the buyers to efficiently organize and manage all information required for due diligence. It facilitates categorization of information, multi-party collaboration, and easy file access with hyperlinking. Synonymously, a Question & Answer forum allows space for deal-related communication in a secure environment. This minimizes the use of multiple tools and the risk of scattered information.
Facilitating Cross-border Transactions
Given the boom in cross-border transactions, Virtual Data Rooms are blurring geographical boundaries and connecting worlds with technology. Operable with 24/7 accessibility with multi-language support to provide a friendly interface, VDRs have evolved over time.
Improved Collaboration
VDR offers real-time updates related to any modifications made in the document, enabling parties to review the latest version of the document. VDR even has in-built communication features, that keep the parties informed and engaged. The communication features include Q&A boards, notifications, and chat to resolve doubts.
Post-Merger Integration
After the M&A deal is finalized, VDR is used to share plans and classified data with the new team to improve the implementation tasks. The users also store their regulatory documentation and maintain an archive of their deal for the future. This is necessary for them to resolve any queries or issues with the workflow.
All of the above factors are crucial indicators of why M&A deal must be carried out to a Modern Virtual Data Room given the speed of business transactions today. But let’s narrow down and only look at Singapore in 2025 and the state of M&A activity in this year.
M&A Deals in 2025 – Charting the Growth of Singapore
DBS Group and Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank
On 27 January 2025, DBS Group of Singapore acquired an additional stake in a Chinese-based Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank for $220.4 Million. This acquisition increased the former’s ownership to 19.40%, making it the largest shareholder.
Shell Plc and Chandra Asri
In May 2024, Shell confirmed the sale of its refinery to Chandra Asri and Glencore. The deal will close in Quarter 1 of 2025 as they await regulatory approval. Chandra Asri and Glencore have opened a new entity under CAPGC for this acquisition. The new entity will operate under the name Aster Chemicals and Energy.
For both the above major transactions, a modern Virtual Data Room must have been employed to carry out the deal with utmost confidentiality. From creating a secure document repository, a separate user interface, a due diligence checklist to ensuring all the stakeholders are on the same page about the decision – a robust Virtual Data Room is an ideal platform to carry this out.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Singapore promotes M&A to boost its economic condition and maintain its reputation as a global business hub.
To facilitate smooth M&A deals, Knovos has engineered Knovos Virtual Data Room – a modern solution that facilitates Mergers & Acquisitions with the highest level of security. It acts as a one-stop solution for enterprises involved in M&A transactions to complete their deal cycle successfully.
Infact, trained on the LLM Model, the Knovos AI-Assist empowers the entire deal cycle with its capabilities. It helps prepare contract summaries, extract document metadata for contract clause analysis, run contextual summaries and more with simple prompts. This makes it easy to map summaries and metadata into existing templates and streamlines the overall drafting, reviewing, and negotiating workflow.
Knovos is available 24/7/365 to assist its clients and has data centers across the globe for easy deployment. Knovos offer multi-factor authentication, time-bound access, and 256-bit encryption for the security of classified documents. Knovos VDR supports 150 languages and customized solutions based on the use case of clients.
Click to know more about Knovos VDR.
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