☕️ Local action movie "Mat Kilau" record-breaking local box office receipts of RM71 mil

We got a SGD25 (~RM79) Secretlab promo code to give away. Reply to today’s issue if you want it! First come, first serve basis! In return, just share our newsletter with your friends and family? ;)

1. MARKET SUMMARY

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE

828 million people in the world, or 9.8% of the world population, are in hunger, according to the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI).

How to prevent speculators from scalping Pokemon cards? By printing 9 billion cards between March 2021 and March 2022. And it’s super effective! To date, the Pokémon Company has printed roughly 43.2 billion cards since its launch.

Sabrina Ionescu broke the record last week — the first 30-point triple-double in the history of the WNBA. Ionescu’s 31 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists marked the third triple-double of her career. A triple-double is a score in a basketball game of at least ten points, ten rebounds, and ten assists by a single player.

Local epic action-drama movie “Mat Kilau: Kebangkitan Pahlawan” has raked in RM71 mil at the box office. This broke the previous record of RM48 mil by “Munafik 2”. The trailer below - looks epic!

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

1. Good news to cure your Tuesday blues - Putrajaya has a change of heart and will not appoint Pasir Salak MP and former Prasarana chairman Tajuddin Rahman as the envoy to Indonesia. His name is not on the latest list of envoys that will receive the letter of appointment from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. However, there’s a conflicting report that his appointment is “delayed”. 

2. The Health Ministry is considering to re-enforce the issuance of compound notices, as people are increasingly complacent about the Covid-19-related SOPs. Previously, all law enforcement agencies have stopped issuing compounds in line with the nationwide transition to the endemic phase.Under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342), individuals found guilty of violating the rules can be fined not more than RM1,000 or imprisoned for a term not exceeding six months.

3. Maybank will adopt a new way to calculate interest, profit and dividend rate, known as - the split-tier method. The new method will apply to all existing and new current account & savings account (CASA) and investment account (IA) products.The split-tier shall be calculated using the formula "account balance for each band x each interest/profit/dividend rate band x total number of days / total days of the year". Maybank has not disclosed the justification behind this move. Any bankers know whether consumers will be worse off with this new method?

4. The iconic five-star Sheraton Imperial Kuala Lumpur Hotel has been sold for about RM250 mil to Achi Jaya Group of Companies - a company linked to Sarawak Governor Taib Mahmud’s brother, Onn Mahmud. The RM250 mil price tag for the 33-storey hotel translates to about RM628,140 per room, which is pretty pricey compared to recent transactions. To take things into perspective -i) 2019 - Boustead Holdings sold the Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang Hotel for RM177.3 mil (RM443,250 per room).ii) 2018 - The unrefurbished Swiss Garden Inn was sold for RM130 mil (RM439,200 per room).iii) 2017 - Hilton Kuala Lumpur was sold for RM497 mil (RM988,000 per room). This is an outlier as the hotel is located in the bustling KL Sentral area and the hotel has been touted as one of the most successful hotels in Malaysia.iv) 2016 - IGB Corp sold the Renaissance Kuala Lumpur Hotel to Ventura International Sdn Bhd for RM765 mil (RM840,659 per room).

Shorts:

1. PM Ismail Sabri has expressed interest to Turkiye so that the operations of the currently-under-expansion Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISGIA)’s third terminal and second runaway are being handover to Malaysia Airports Holdings (MAHB). The expansion project is undertaken by the Turkiye government. ISGIA is wholly owned and managed by MAHB.

2. After a slew of resignations and still being designated as a Practice Note 17 (PN17) company, Tony Fernandes has been appointed as the acting group CEO for AirAsia X.

3. Malaysia’s first car, Proton Saga, celebrated its 37th birthday on July 9 and the date coincided with the birthday of our former premier and founder of Proton Holdings, Tun Dr Mahathir.Proton Saga was selected via a naming contest, where the Saga is defined as the hard red seed from the Saga tree and was also an acronym for safety, achievement, greatness, and ability.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

1. Sri Lanka descended into further chaos as protesters stormed the official residences of President Gobataya Rajapaksa and PM Ranil Wickremesinghe and went as far as setting fire to the latter. The whereabouts of Rajapaksa is unknown. Protesters even found 17.85 mil rupees (USD50,000) in Rajapaksa’s residence but handed it over to the police. Both the president and PM will step down. Read here for what’s next for Sri Lanka.

2. Elon Musk and Twitter saga updates:

   1. Elon Musk is terminating the agreement to acquire Twitter for USD44 bil over Twitter’s “false and misleading” numbers on fake user accounts.

   2. In response, Twitter has hired one of the world’s top corporate law firms Wachtell, Lipton Rosen and Katz LLP, to sue Elon Musk.

   3. The investment banks must be stressing over this as they stand to lose almost USD192 mil in fees, the largest earnings for an M&A deal this year and third-largest since 2020.

   4. The initial agreement included a USD1 bil breakup fee should either party walks away, but it isn’t that straightforward to pay the breakup fee without further consequences.

3. Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe’s assassination updates:

   1. The former PM died from 2 sustained gunshot wounds to the front of the neck and a damaged heart despite receiving more than 100 units of blood transfusions. Warning — graphic video of the shooting incident below.

   2. Suspect Yamagami Tetsuya, 41, was arrested on the scene with a homemade gun (view image here). The suspect worked for the Japanese navy for three years and had live-firearms training.

   3. The killer’s motive has nothing to do with political beliefs. He told investigators that he blamed Abe’s association with a religious group known as Moonies and widely described by former members as a cult that caused his mother’s financial ruin.

4. For parents with kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - video game could ease their symptoms. EndeavorRx, the game developed by Boston-based tech firm Akili became the first game in 2020 to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for use in the treatment of ADHD in children. The app-based game was developed together with neuroscientists and is designed to stimulate and improve areas in the brain the plays a crucial role in attention function. Funny thing - to play this game, the doctor has to prescribe it! 

5. More details emerged on how the biggest crypto hack in March saw North Korea-linked hackers stealing USD620 mil from NFT-based game Axie Infinity. The hackers posed as job recruiters on Linkedin and baited a senior engineer at the game company into going through multiple rounds of interviews for a position that did not exist. They then sent the engineer an offer letter laced with spyware that gave the hackers access to Axie Infinity's blockchain network, Ronin.

6. From protecting the nation’s highest elected leaders and foreign heads of state to protecting a social media billionaire — the head of US Secret Service James Murray, is leaving the agency after 27 years to become Snap’s security chief.

7. One bright spot in Shopee’s overseas expansion — the e-commerce giant will open five new distribution centres in Brazil. Shopee was among Brazil's most downloaded e-commerce apps since its launch in 2019. The past few months saw Shopee shutting its operations in India, France and Spain.

8. Amazon signed a big lease of about 369,000 sq feet at the new IOI Central Boulevard Towers in Singapore, owned by Malaysia-listed developer IOI Properties Group Bhd. Amazon may be paying SGD10 per sq feet a month in rent, working out to a monthly rental of SGD3.69 mil (RM11.6 mil). Some relief for property owners as WFH trend has not replaced office spaces.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 👁👁

1. Why is a green screen used in visual effects?

2. Even penguins find it difficult to trade down their lifestyle to eating cheaper fish as Japanese aquarium faces inflationary pressure.

3. Last week, an avalanche in Italy took the lives of 11 people. Now, another avalanche in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Fortunately, no one was harmed. Visit the Instagram post below to read the experience of filming this avalanche.