☕️ Batu Puteh Saga - Tun M fires back

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

12.6% is the medical cost inflation rate Malaysia recorded in 2023, more than double the global average of 5.6%. This increase, up from 12% in 2022, poses significant challenges for both healthcare providers and patients requiring long-term care. While the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) raised concerns about the rising inflation rate, APHM President Datuk Dr Kuljit Singh estimated the rate to be just above 7%, suggesting that the reported figure might be inaccurate. He attributed the inflation to the high costs of upgrading healthcare infrastructure and technologies like modern scanners and robotics. Despite the challenges, Malaysia’s dual healthcare system offers a safety net, with private hospitals providing voluntary treatment options and public hospitals offering subsidised care.

5% is the projected salary increase across all industries in Malaysia for 2025, according to a survey by Mercer. Nearly 25% of companies plan to raise headcount next year. The energy and shared services industries are leading in base salary offerings. With 70% of companies planning to adjust their remuneration strategies next year, the talent market remains highly competitive. The survey, which involved over 680 companies across various sectors, aligns with the salary increase forecast in Malaysia’s 2024 budget.

10 mil tickets have been sold for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour since it began in March 2023, with 149 shows across five continents. The tour became the first to gross over USD1 bil by the end of 2023, and the final tally is expected to be double that. Swift is expected to earn nearly USD10 mil from each show of her tour — that’s a cool USD1.49 bil. According to Forbes, Swift has a networth of USD1.1 bil.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Batu Puteh Saga - Tun M fires back

Politically Motivated?
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has claimed the criminal investigation brought against him by the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) over the Batu Puteh dispute is actually politically motivated, and that he welcomes the investigation as a chance to clear his name. The decision to withdraw Malaysia’s application for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to review its 2008 decision which saw the island awarded to Singapore was not made by him alone during his second stint as Prime Minister, as the criminal investigation suggests.

Treachery? Your Wife Was There Too!
In response to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s claim of treachery, Mahathir retorted that Anwar’s wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, was part of the decision as well, considering she was the Deputy PM when the decision was made. He also stressed that the decision was made by the Cabinet of the time, and that “the whole process was gone through”. 

Declassified, But Redacted
Mahathir questioned how the government was going to debate the declassified RCI report when 47 pages of the report were redacted, also questioning who made the decision to redact a declassified document. In addition, Mahathir pointed to the rejection of his court request for the RCI to conduct open proceedings and asked for the reasons behind the rejection.

Lèse-majesté and Royal Concerns

1. Sanusi off one hook, still on for the other

   The Kedah Menteri Besar was let off the hook over his charge of sedition against the Sultan of Selangor after the prosecution decided not to continue with the charge after the Sultan accepted Sanusi’s apology. However, Sanusi still faces the charge of questioning the decision of the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong after the general election of 2022 to have a unity government under Anwar. The then-King of Malaysia was the Sultan of Pahang.

2. Anwar dodges query on Najib’s royal addendum

   The PM deflected a question regarding a purported royal addendum that decreed former PM Najib could serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest, stating instead that a fresh proposal has been sent to Yang Di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Ibrahim suggesting the royal addendum claimed by Najib be referred to the Pardons Board for deliberations. Najib claimed that the decree was issued by the Sultan of Pahang when he was King. However, the Pahang Palace has decided not to issue a statement on the matter to respect court proceedings.

Affordable Housing, Buying Banks, Concerns of Rice

1. SkyWorld inks deal to develop Malaysia’s largest affordable housing project

   The deal was inked with Penang state agencies to jointly develop the project, located in Seberang Perai and valued at RM13 bil. The project aims to deliver over 38,000 Rumah Mampu Milik Madani and Rumah Bakat Baru Madani homes priced between RM225,000 to RM420,000, targeting the M40 group. The project will also span 10 years, with the first phase to be launched in 2026. 

2. CIMB and OCBC in the fray over stake in Indonesian bank

   The two banks, among the top five in Southeast Asia, are vying for a controlling stake in Bank Pan Indonesia (Panin), with non-binding offers already submitted. The stake is jointly offered by Australian lender ANZ and Indonesia’s Gunawan family, who founded the bank. The former owns a 39.22% stake in Panin, with the Gunawan family holding 46.52%, for a combined value of about USD2.4 bil. It is also reported that Maybank is looking to submit a bid as well, along with Japanese lenders Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.

3. Gamuda joins Google Cloud game with acquisition, joint venture

   The infrastructure, engineering, and construction firm acquired a 20% stake in Google Cloud premier partner Cloud Space Sdn Bhd for RM18 mil, paving the way for Gamuda to tap into the RM36 bil technology services market. Meanwhile, Gamuda also entered a joint venture with DNeX to provide novel air-gapped Google Distributed Cloud Services to Malaysia in both the private and public space, with each side holding 50% equity in the JV firm.

Shorts:

1. Heavy floods lead to loss of 53 million kg of rice

   The Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Datuk Arthur Joseph Kurup, shared that the “exceptionally severe” floods have cost Malaysia a potential output of 5.3 million 10-kilogram bags of rice up to this point. He also announced that his ministry will be implementing four measures to address the shortage of rice from the floods, including the banning of mixing white rice and imported rice. The measures will come into effect on Jan 1 2025.

2. Health Ministry to cancel drug monopoly

   The government, in response to the uncontrollable rise in the cost of medicines, will be cancelling the monopoly of some drug companies, with the Health Ministry tasked with looking into the possibility of sourcing generic medicines. The government is also looking into deploying the Diagnosis-Related Groups model, a system that categorises patients with similar clinical diagnoses in order to better control hospital costs, which will be expedited as a response to medical inflation.

3. MCMC tech chief to head new AI agency

   Shamsul Izhan Abdul Majid, currently the MCMC’s chief technology and innovation officer, has been tapped to serve as the head of the new National Artificial Intelligence Office (NAIO). According to Digital Minister Gobind Singh, Shamsul will be tasked to lead initiatives to harness AI to accelerate economic growth, enhance public services, and ensure ethical and responsible AI implementation across sectors.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

New Syria : Here comes Israel
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that Israel has undertaken around 250 air strikes on Syria in the past 48 hours after the country went into a state of “power vacuum”. The barrage of aerial attacks targeted air defence facilities and damaged Syrian naval ships as well as military warehouses. Within and around Damascus, strikes targeted military installations, research centres and the electronic warfare administration.

Israel also sent troops into the “buffer zone” on the east of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, justifying it as a “temporary” measure for security reasons. Israel also seized more territory in the said buffer zone - an incursion that violates a 50-year ceasefire agreement with Syria according to UN peacekeepers.

Israel is clearly taking full advantage of the situation to expand their presence in the Golan Heights and beyond. The Syrian people deserve to rebuild their country free from foreign occupation and violence, but with all these ongoing interventions, how can the country rebuild itself independently?

Taiwan increases alert level as China sends largest naval fleet in decades
Taiwan upped its military alert level on Dec 9 after China deployed its largest navy fleet in the regional waters surrounding Taiwan. Taiwan’s Defence Ministry spokesman said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of the 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections.

On Dec 10, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said it detected 47 military aircraft operating around the island over the past 24 hours, as well as 12 navy vessels and 9 “official” ships, which refers to vessels from civilian agencies such as the Coast Guard. The number of China ships in the region remained at around 90, which Taiwan finds “very alarming”.

China views Taiwan as its own territory and has claimed sovereignty over the island nation. This year to date, it held two rounds of war games around Taiwan to make its statement, particularly to the US who is growing closer to Taipei.

Tech things:

• OpenAI is releasing Sora to the public, its new AI video generator
  OpenAI is finally launching its long-awaited Sora, an AI system that can generate realistic videos up to 20 seconds in length, with multiple variations of those clips, based on text prompts from users. The new system is OpenAI’s efforts to keep pace with the growing number of startups that now offer tools to generate short clips quickly and cheaply rather than creating video from scratch. Rivals are companies like Pika, Haiper and Runway, the last of which recently partnered with a studio to train a new AI model and explore how the technology can be used in film production. However, Sora will only be available for those who pay USD20 (RM88.56) a month for ChatGPT Plus subscription, and won’t be available in most of Europe who has tougher tech regulations. View the samples here.

• Google unveils a stunning quantum computing chip
  Google has come up with a mind-boggling quantum computing chip named Willow, claiming that it could solve a problem that currently would take the world’s fastest supercomputers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete. The chip is a milestone in the latest developments of quantum computing, which is attempting to use the principles of particle physics to create a new type of powerful computer. However, experts said that a major problem with the technology is that it is prone to errors, with an increasing tendency to error when it has more qubits. Google researchers say they have reversed this and managed to engineer and program the new chip so the error rate fell across the whole system as the number of qubits increased. As exciting as it is, experts also said that Willow is for now still an experimental device, as it would take years and billions of dollars to finally come up with a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real-world problems. Nevertheless, many countries are already investing in quantum computing - there are already 50 quantum businesses in the UK, attracting GBP800 mil (RM4.5 bil) in funding and employing 1300 people.

Shorts:

1. Mondelez considering acquiring chocolate maker Hershey 
   Chicago-based Mondelez International Inc, a snack and sweets company is eyeing an acquisition of the timeless brand Hershey Co. If it comes to fruition, the deal will potentially form a new food giant, with combined sales of almost USD50 bil (RM221 bil). Following the news, shares in Hershey Co. rose as much as 19% on Monday for their biggest intraday gain in more than eight years, giving the company a market value of USD41 bil. Mondelez fell 3%, giving it a market capitalization of roughly USD82 bil.

2. UnitedHealth Brian Thompson murder suspect charged 

   The suspect for the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson has been found and prosecuted on a murder charge, after a tense 5-day hunt by the authorities. Luigi Mangione, 26, was identified and spotted eating in McDonald’s by a customer and employee who then reported him to the police. Police searched his bag and found a black “ghost gun” – a firearm assembled from parts that makes it untraceable – loaded with a magazine and a silencer, along with clothing and mask that were similar to the ones used by the killer.

3. Lewis Hamilton bids adieu to Mercedes after 12 years, 6 titles and 246 races 
   Hamilton is finally leaving Mercedes, but not without utter gratitude and millions of memories. The British driver won all but one of his seven career drivers’ championships with Mercedes, in the most successful partnership between a team and driver in F1 history, ending with a pass on teammate George Russell for fourth place on the very last lap in Abu Dhabi. Turning 40 soon, he continues to seek his 8th world title with Ferrari beginning in 2025.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. Francois Brunelle photographed more than 200 pairs of doppelgängers. Back in 2016, the researchers set out to look for the odds of finding a pair of doppelgänger — even with 7.4 bil people (back then) on the planet, that’s only a one in 135 chance that there’s a single pair of doppelgangers.

2. Take a tour of this RM34 mil bungalow in Damansara Heights