Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is also Finance Minister, unveiled 2013 budgets in the Parliaments on Friday 28th September 2012. The Budget’s theme is “Prospering the Nation, Enhancing the Well-being of the Rakyat: A Promise Fulfilled.
The Budget was designed to improve the rakyat’s quality of life, ensure sustainable economic growth, spend prudently and reduce the fiscal deficit
The Government’s budget deficit estimated to improve to 4.0% next year compared with 4.5% in 2012. On top of that, the economic growth was projected to be between 4.5% and 5.5% for 2013, with this year’s growth expected at 4.5% to 5.0%.
The following are Budget 2013 highlights for Personal Finance and Investment.
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Central banks in countries namely United States (US), Germany, France and Italy hold 70% of their reserve in gold. What spurs them to use gold as reserve is their loss of confidence towards the two world leading currencies, the US dollar and Euro. Gold is viewed as a federal reserve and is a counter against the swing of the US dollar.
United States, who is the leader in the world of economy, has been facing one of the roughest times with its shrinking economy and increasing unemployment rate. Since the concluded of the Great Recession 3 years ago, the country’s employment rate has topped 8% for each month with job growth slowed drastically in August. Employers only added 96,000 jobs which indicate a fall from 141,000 in July, far below the 12 million over citizens who are still unemployed.
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The Fortune Global 500 is an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations or companies worldwide as measured by revenue. The list is compiled and published annually by Fortune magazine.
The list was first published in 1989 but only cover US industrial companies. In 1995, the list changed to include all companies & sectors.
The latest 2011 ranking was published on 23th July 2012. In 2012 edition, Royal Dutch Shell gained the top position replacing Wal-Mart Stores. There is only one (1) Malaysian company managed to be in the 2012 Fortune Global list, namely Petronas at 68th position improving from the 86th position in 2011.
The table below is top 20 of Fortune Global 500.
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Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad, a pay-TV firm controlled by tycoon Ananda Krishnan is scheduled to be listed in Main Market of Bursa Malaysia on the 19th October 2012. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) consists of 1.52 billion shares at an indicative IPO price of RM3.00 per share.
Out of these, 597.69 million shares will be offered to Bumiputra investors, 661.75 million shares to other institutional and selected investors, while 259.865 million shares will be offered to retail investors.
The institutional price will be determined by way of book building while for the retail application, it is payable at RM3.00 upon application. If the final retail price is lower, the difference will be refunded accordingly.
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The demand for the IGB REIT IPO was very good. The institutional portion of the initial public offering has been oversubscribed by more than 30 times and oversubscribed by 21.75 times by the Malaysian public. IGB REIT IPO is the forth largest this year behind FGV and IHH.
The dividend yield for the IGB REIT was likely to be 5.1% to 5.2% a year.
Various research houses give early target or fair prices for IGB REIT ahead of the listing day, tomorrow 21st September 2012. All of them generally targeted higher than IPO subscription prices of RM1.25 per share in the range of RM1.37 to RM1.45.
The table below is the compilation of target price / fair value from various research houses.
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