Business and technology quick bites: 04.05.2021

Updated version at 8.00 am

The highlighted words in red are links to the news article.

May 4, 2021,

Business News

1. Britain and India announced £1 billion pounds (S$1.85 billion) of private-sector investment and committed to seek a free trade deal as Britain seeks new trading partners after leaving the European Union.
2. Asian stocks look set to open modestly higher Tuesday after a muted session on Wall Street, where technology giants weighed on the market. The dollar dropped with Treasury yields.
3. KKR & Co. raised $18.5 billion for the latest and largest version of its flagship North America buyout fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York-based firm has been among the most active dealmakers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
4. Private equity firm Permira is considering a sale of Tricor Group in a deal that could value the business and investor services provider at about US$2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
5. US asset manager Fidelity Investments has halved its valuation of Ant Group in its latest filings assessing the worth of shares its funds hold in the Chinese financial technology giant, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
6. India is rapidly closing the gap with China in minting new unicorns highlighting growing investor appetite for tech startups in the country as the pandemic accelerates adoption of digital services.
7. Iskandar Waterfront Holdings Sdn Bhd (IWH) is said to have reached out to IJM Corp Bhd, one of Malaysia’s largest conglomerates, with a preliminary proposal for a three-way merger between both groups’ construction and property, plantation and highway divisions.
8. Some 800 foreign and local students at LimKokWing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) have been left in the lurch after the university could not get accreditation for many of its courses. The accreditation was revoked by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) for failing to maintain certain quality and standards required by the authorities.

Technology News

1. Payments firm Flywire on Monday made its paperwork for a US listing public, seeking a valuation as high as US$3 billion and revealed a 38% surge in revenue in the latest quarter as it benefits from strong remote working trends due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
2. British electric van and bus maker Arrival will develop an electric car for Uber Technologies Inc that will go into production in late 2023, the two companies said on Tuesday.
3. Hangry, an Indonesian cloud kitchen startup that wants to become a global food and beverage company, has raised a $13 million Series A, led by returning investor Alpha JWC Ventures.
4. Indonesian robo-advisor app, Bibit, led a new $65 million growth round that also included participation from Prosus Ventures, Tencent, Harvard Management Company and returning investors AC Ventures and East Ventures.