Phua Zhenghao, group head of investments, asset management at CGS International, argues that some churn is unavoidable, even in a healthy market. According to Phua’s calculations, there have been about 93 delistings in the past five years, compared to just 39 new listings, as at end-October.
“I think you will see the ‘normal delisting’ of weaker companies… but the ecosystem is trying hard to get more listings here,” he says. In his view, new regulations and changes to existing ones are expected to help reduce the risk of companies delisting and allow firms to keep their listing status while they focus on improving the business, especially during a downturn.
He stresses that delisting in itself is “not necessarily a bad signal”. Capital will recycle and “companies that cannot turn around will just have to exit and find other ways of funding that could be better models for them”.
Pol de Win, senior managing director and head of global sales and origination at SGX Group, has a similar view. To him, the spate of delistings is “part and parcel of a properly functioning capital market” and not necessarily negative. If a listed company is persistently undervalued, privatisation may offer a better outcome for shareholders.
Delistings also push listed companies to communicate better with investors, he adds. “If you’re properly valued in the public market, you won’t be taken private. So, therefore, these things are quite natural and I think it’s good for the broader functioning of our marketplace.”
The speed of decline has also accelerated in the past couple of years. Fullerton Fund Management’s head of investment strategy, Robert St Clair, notes that the net change averaged about eight exits a year for much of the past decade. Over the last two years, the market has seen a drop of around 120 listings.
He is cautious about reading this as proof of structural decline. Headline turnover and liquidity metrics have held up, while bid-ask spreads have narrowed. The sectoral profile of exits also points to a strong cyclical element. Industrial companies account for a meaningful share of the delistings, as do real estate names. That mirrors a global pattern in which only the most productive, automated firms are keeping up with tougher competition in supply chains and logistics.
See also: Pop Mart’s 40% stock rout shows growing Labubu crash worry
Other companies have left the market through mergers and acquisitions, privatisations or a move into private capital, where disclosure and reporting obligations are less onerous. “Our view is that the recent listing shrinkage looks cyclical rather than structural,” says St Clair. “It coincides with very rapid changes in productivity expectations post-Covid and tougher competition in industrial supply chains.”
That diagnosis strengthens rather than weakens the case for policy intervention, he argues. If the main pressures are cyclical and cost-driven, then measures that lower the cost of being public, improve research coverage and support primary issuance when the window is open can tilt the balance in favour of staying listed.
The privatisation moves by the Widjaja family in the last few years is an example of how these forces play out at company level. Earlier this year, the Indonesian billionaire family, through vehicle Lyon Investments, took Sinarmas Land private at 31 cents per share. The offer was described as an opportunity for shareholders to realise a clean exit at a premium, and to cash out amid low trading liquidity.
The offeror also highlights that the group holds a significant amount of land, especially in Indonesia, which represents large amounts of invested capital that will take time to develop and realise. This can result in irregular and variable profits from year to year. In addition, the company has not raised new equity on SGX in the last five years and is unlikely to need access to Singapore’s capital markets to finance its operations in the foreseeable future.
Earlier, in 2023, the Widjajas also took coal miner Golden Energy and Resources private. The family still has another Singapore-listed vehicle in the form of palm oil producer Golden Agri-Resources.
Potential turning point
For investors, fewer listed names mean a thinner opportunity set in certain sectors, fewer peers to benchmark against and less incentive for research houses to cover the market. Over time, that can feed back into depressed valuations and make the public markets even less attractive relative to private equity or offshore listings.
To stay ahead of Singapore and the region’s corporate and economic trends, click here for Latest Section
These concerns framed The Edge Singapore’s cover story, “Making the Singapore market great again” (Issue 1160; week of Oct 21, 2024), which examined how low liquidity, poor valuations and delistings had eroded confidence in SGX. Since then, MAS has moved from diagnosis to design, setting up an equities market review group in 2024. The group, chaired by Minister for Transport and Second Minister for Finance Chee Hong Tat, has now produced a first set of demand, supply and regulatory measures.
On the demand side, the flagship initiative is the $5 billion EQDP. Under this programme, MAS and the Financial Sector Development Fund will invest with selected fund managers to run actively managed strategies that have a strong focus on Singapore stocks, especially the small- and mid-caps. To complement this, MAS intends to exempt tax on fund managers’ qualifying income derived from funds that invest substantially in Singapore-listed equities.
A separate adjustment to the Global Investor Programme (GIP) tightens the link between residence-related incentives and the local market. GIP applicants using the family office option will now have to deploy at least $50 million into equities listed on approved Singapore exchanges. Previously, the qualifying basket included listed equities and REITs as well as qualifying debt securities, Singapore-distributed funds and non-listed operating companies. These applicants must also establish a single family office with at least $200 million in assets under management.
Research coverage is another focus area. MAS will expand the research development grant scheme under its Grant for Equity Market Singapore (GEMS) to build a “ready investor base”. The enhanced programme is intended to sharpen the focus on mid and small caps and widen research dissemination.
On the supply side, the proposals are designed to bring down the effective cost of listing and staying listed. A 20% corporate income tax rebate has been proposed for new primary listings and a 10% rebate for new secondary listings with share issuance. The caps are set at $6 million per year of assessment for qualifying entities with a market capitalisation above $1 billion, and $3 million for those below that threshold.
These rebates will sit alongside the existing GEMS listing grant, which already provides co-funding of eligible listing expenses. The scheme offers 70% co-funding for companies listing on the Mainboard and 20% for those listing on Catalist. MAS also proposed an enhanced concessionary tax rate of 5% on qualifying income for new fund manager listings in Singapore, provided they distribute a portion of profits as dividends.
At the pipeline level, the government plans to continue building up local enterprises through new investment schemes. The long-term goal is to ensure a steady cohort of companies for which listing on SGX is a logical step in their growth, rather than an emergency option when other funding channels close.
Market experts say the combination of these measures, together with improving global risk appetite, is beginning to change behaviour. After only one IPO in the first half of the year, there has been a visible pick-up in new listings and filing activity in 2H2025. The absolute numbers are still modest compared to larger regional rivals, but bankers and advisers report more serious engagement from companies considering Mainboard and Catalist listings, as well as from foreign issuers exploring a secondary or dual listing in Singapore.
Fewer suspensions, more disclosure
The third pillar of the review group’s work involves changes to the regulatory architecture. Here, the direction is towards a less prescriptive, more disclosure-based regime that aims to preserve Singapore’s reputation for integrity while reducing friction for issuers.
The review group has proposed consolidating listing suitability and prospectus review within Singapore Exchange Regulation. Instead of navigating multiple agencies, issuers will work with a single frontline regulator, while MAS continues to set the overarching framework and enforce the Securities and Futures Act.
Prospectus and listing requirements will be streamlined across key areas, including financial information, interested person transactions and conflicts of interest. MAS says core disclosure standards will be maintained in line with international norms, with greater emphasis on clear presentation of material information. The target is for a typical listing review to take six to eight weeks, which should shorten time to market and improve certainty for would-be issuers.
For secondary listings, MAS plans to simplify requirements so that issuers can rely largely on the prospectus used in their primary market, with only minimal adaptations. That could be particularly relevant for regional companies seeking access to Singapore’s investor base and capital pool without shifting their primary listing.
Post-listing interventions will also be recalibrated. Singapore Exchange Regulation intends to adopt a more targeted approach to public queries, alerts and trading suspensions. MAS notes that such actions can sometimes have unintended and disruptive effects on trading. A narrower, risk-based use of these tools is meant to balance market discipline with investor protection.
The regulator will also consult on removing the financial watch-list, which has long been viewed as a stigma that may hasten delistings rather than prompting genuine turnarounds.
For companies already under pressure, Phua sees these changes as providing breathing space. The intention, he says, is to reduce the risk of knee-jerk delistings by allowing management to focus on fixing the business while remaining listed, subject to ongoing disclosure. Delisting remains a valid outcome for firms that cannot restore viability, but it should be a considered option rather than the default response to regulatory constraints.
Already, Maybank has noticed that with the policies in place, market volumes are up 50% and delistings are falling, while IPOs are increasing. “We think this is indicating that SGX is increasingly becoming relevant as an IPO venue after many years of being disadvantaged by high-growth regional bourses and higher-valuation US,” says Maybank Singapore’s analyst Thilan Wickramasinghe.
