Lawyer Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla confirmed that Dr Mahathir was being questioned by police at his office at the Perdana Leadership Foundation.

“It’s still ongoing. My team are there in the session. I was having a trial so I am on my way there now,” Mohamed Haniff told The Star Online.

As he was not yet present at the session, he could not share what exactly Dr Mahathir was being questioned about.

This is the second time this month that the former premier has been questioned by the authorities.

Earlier in June, Dr Mahathir was questioned at Yayasan Albukhary over his statement that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and Malay Rulers had been “placed under house arrest”.

The company, which is privately held and en route to an initial public offering (IPO) this year, believed that one of the immediate opportunities arising from Brexit is the depreciation in the pound sterling.

EWI chief executive officer Teow Leong Seng told a press conference here that the weakness of the pound could boost its IPO plans.

“We did not anticipate the Brexit outcome and this has led to a weakness in the pound, but we think this event has its positives.

“The immediate positive for us is that we are going into this listing targeting to raise 2.6 billion ringgit (US$631.61 million). The weakness of the pound will give us 10 per cent more firepower (from the proposed funds to be raised) when we go to London.

“Our international buyers have immediately gotten a 10 per cent reduction in whatever they bought in London. We think sales will continue to be strong,” he added.

Generally, about 40 per cent of the purchasers of EWI’s projects in London are outside the United Kingdom and about 50 per cent of the buyers are in that country.

Teow also believed that London would continue to be a “primary real estate destination” post-Brexit.

“London has its advantages and the strength of the city is still intact. Moving forward, when we look at sites to acquire, we will be careful to try to understand what is going on with Brexit. And the sites that we look at will automatically have a 10 per cent reduction.

“We believe the weakness of the pound will prompt investors to look at the UK now because it has suddenly become cheaper,” he added.

EWI executive vice-chairman Kee Sin concurred that there were opportunities to be tapped from the weakness of the pound.

“If prices come back to post-Battersea levels, it will become a very good buy in London. At the end of the day, it is about land costs and selling prices. In a developed economy like the UK and Australia, the selling prices are quite fixed.

“Every developer sells and construction costs are more or less at the same price because the inflation rate is stable,” Liew said.

“If land prices are dropping, then it is a good time to buy provided you have the cash.

“We are not looking to buy at the moment,” he added.

Teow said the reaction to Brexit could be momentary and the longer-term effects would eventually be seen.

“Actually, the market has already settled and things seem to have stabilised.

“Our sales have been very strong in the UK and continue to be so. As long as sales continue to be strong and costs are kept under control, it will have no impact on our numbers,” he said.

Liew said that crises such as the Brexit come and go, but the resilient spirit of the people to overcome must not be overlooked.

“We should take comfort in how the world has evolved. In 2008/2009, when the subprime crisis struck the United States. The country pumped in trillions into the economy to buy all the bad debts. But look at America now, it has a top currency that is demanded by everybody and the country has recovered.

“You must believe in the spirit of entrepreneurship of how people overcome hurdles and move on and history proves this,” Liew added.

On the impending listing of EWI, Teow said that an international player has expressed interest to take up a stake the “same size” as Eco World Development Group Bhd (EWB), which has caused it to make adjustments in the listing proposal.

“As we were looking for cornerstone investors wanting to take up 2 per cent or 3 per cent, we chanced upon this investor who wanted a stake that is the same size as EWB. A stake of the same size would make them co-anchors,” said Teow.

EWI is majority-owned by Liew and upon listing, EWB has proposed to take a stake of between 20 per cent and 30 per cent.

It had been speculated that Guocoland Ltd of Singapore, which is controlled by Quek Leng Chan of the Hong Leong group, had expressed interest to be anchor investor in EWI together with EWB.

Teow said that the co-anchor investor was not asking for any management position and only wanted board representation.

Liew added that EWI would continue to be led by the present management.

He also said that the entry of a co-anchor investor was a major change, as it would mean two brand names for EWI.

In a statement, AirAsia said that passengers who are travelling on all flights operated by Malaysia AirAsia (flight code AK) and Thai AirAsia (flight code FD) are advised to check-in at Terminal 1, which is within walking distance from the old terminal.

The new terminal T1 was put into use on March 12, to improve the quality of services at Yangon International Airport, a main gateway to Myanmar.

Malaysia AirAsia operates two routes from Kuala Lumpur and Penang into Yangon, while Thai AirAsia operates one route from Bangkok into Yangon with a total of 45 weekly flights.

Vietnam Airlines is conducting 10 flights per week between the two countries, including five between Hanoi and Yangon and five between Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon.

Aviation treaty with Netherlands

Myanmar and the Netherlands on Monday signed the Air Services Agreement that would allow airlines in the two countries to operate seven weekly services.

The agreement was signed by Kyaw Myo, deputy minister for transport and communications, and Karel Hartogh, ambassador of the Netherlands to Myanmar. Attending the signing ceremony were representatives from Myanmar National Airlines, Myanmar Airways International, Golden Myanmar Airlines and Royal Dutch KLM.

The aviation agreement between Myanmar and the Netherlands was originally signed in 1951 and was revised in 1977. This is the third time the agreement has been revised to accommodate current trends.

“Airlines from both countries can fly seven times per week now. At present, there is no direct flight between the two countries yet,” said the deputy minister.

Some countries that have agreements with Myanmar revised their agreements after 2010. Many of the revised agreements replaced the phrase “single destination” “multiple destinations”.

Myanmar has aviation agreements with about 50 countries, including EU countries, the US and Israel, in addition to neighbouring countries. Myanmar’s earliest aviation agreement was signed with the US in 1949.

The Nielsen Vietnam Cross-Platform Insights Report 2015 provides a comprehensive view of the way Vietnamese consume digital media in today’s cross-platform environment, which helps understand the extent of cross-device content consumption.

The report has been conducted in nine Asia markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In all markets, a sample of 1,000 frequent online users aged 16 years and above was captured using an online survey methodology.

According to the report, nine out of 10 consumers in Vietnam (91 per cent) own smartphones as personal ownership, compared to 82 per cent in 2014.

In Asia, consumers in Singapore are the most digitally active, averaging 25 hours and 9 minutes per week.

Vietnamese aged between 21 and 29 are spending the most time on Internet, up to 27 hours and 2 minutes per week, growing at a faster pace than other age groups.

Next is the group aged 40 and above, spending around 22 hours and 6 minutes online.

When coming to the devices being used for Internet connection, 31 per cent of consumers most often access Internet via smartphones and 38 per cent of them use laptops for Internet browsing.

“The rapid up-take of connected devices, especially smartphones and tablets, is instrumental in media consumption shifting beyond traditional media formats such as broadcast TV, and also beyond traditional time parts,” notes Doan Duy Khoa, Director of Consumer Insights of Nielsen Vietnam.

“For media owners, it is becoming increasingly important to understand consumers’ viewing habits in order to deliver the right content at the right time, working in partnership with advertisers to uncover new opportunities to connect with and engage consumers to build brand awareness, affinity and loyalty”, he adds.

The report also shows that traditional TV continues to maintain its position and relevance in terms of content distribution platforms by far with 72 per cent of consumers watching broadcast TV.

However, alternative platforms are emerging; 78 per cent of digital consumers report watching TV content and movies via online platforms such as video-on-demand (VOD).

And 67 per cent of video-on-demand subscribers claim to stream VOD content every day. YouTube (97 per cent), Facebook (81 per cent) and nhaccuatui.com (56 per cent) are acknowledged as the top three popular sources from which consumers access VOD content.

According to the report, more than nine in 10 Vietnamese are dual-screeners. Regardless of age, they all love to access some form of content through TV and online sources at the same time.

“As device ownership increases, dual screening could become the norm. There is likely to be increasing experimentation to access content through new devices like smartphones, tablets and Connected/Smart TVs”, Khoa notes.

As a part of a competition called “Level Up – Soft Skills Opening the Future”, the event was organised by the HCM City General Sciences Library and Samsung Electronics Vietnam.

Organised at S-hub, a place for young people and start-up entrepreneurs, the participants exchanged experiences with teachers and famous businesspeople.

“It’s no longer difficult to find information as it can be found on the Internet. So the most important things are people’s communicative abilities and skills when facing issues. Because of that, we need practical experience,” said Nguyen Van Dao, deputy director of Samsung.

The last round of the competition will be held in late July.

The plans arose from a meeting between Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen when Thongloun visited Cambodia from June 27-28.

According to Laos’ Foreign Ministry, both sides agreed on several fields of cooperation and are opening general consulates.

The Lao consulate will be located in Stung Treng province of Cambodia and will open on June 30, while the Cambodian consulate in Champassak province will open on July 1.

During the meeting, the two prime ministers said they highly valued the achievements in cooperation that had continued to increase after exchange visits by heads of state, heads of government and other high-ranking officials of the two countries.

Both sides are planning an official opening ceremony of international border checkpoints at the Nong Nok Khiene area in Champassak province and the Trapeang Kriel area in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province by the end of this year.

Another plan supported by both countries is to build a 145-metre bridge across the Xe Lam Phao River in Champassak’s Mounlapamok district to connect to Cambodia.

A 78km road linking Mounlapamok district to the Xe Lam Phao bridge is also planned.

Both sides agreed to promote investment and trade cooperation between their neighbouring provinces after bilateral trade reached US$24.5 million (Bt865 million) last year.

In the field of education, it was agreed to increase government-to-government bachelor degree exchange scholarships to 15 annually.

The two countries will continue to cooperate on border security and prevent the illegal trade in timber and drugs in border areas. They also agreed to speed up border demarcation.

On regional issues, both sides agreed to assist and support each other through groupings such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam; Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam; the Ayeyawaddy-Chao Phraya Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy; Asean; the UN; and the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Thongloun will attend a CLV meeting that Cambodia will host in November.

He invited Prime Minister Hun Sen to visit Laos at a convenient time and to attend the Asean Summit that Laos will host this year.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia, the budget carrier said it had entered into a share sale agreement with Yeo to purchase 881,873 ordinary shares of 1 ringgit in T&Co, or 80 per cent of the share capital of the company.

AirAsia said the purchase consideration shall be satisfied in part by cash of 814,000 ringgit and in part by AirAsia credit shell of 100,000 ringgit which may be used to pay for flights on all carriers within the AirAsia group.

The carrier has also entered into a shareholders agreement with Yeo, Douglas Cheng Heng Lee and T&Co to govern the foregoing parties’ relationship as the shareholders of T&Co.

T&Co has been supplying inflight coffee and tea solutions to AirAsia since December 2013.

“The purchase price of 914,000 ringgit is based on the agreed valuation of 1.14 million ringgit.

“This was derived after taking into consideration T&Co’s net tangible assets of 280,586 ringgit as of June 2015 and the capitalisation of the amount owing to Cheng of 852,341 ringgit.

“Upon capitalisation, the total shares of T&Co shall be increased to 1.102 million bringing up the NTA per share to 1.03 ringgit,” AirAsia said.

The carrier said the T&Co board would have three directors comprising of two directors nominated by Airasia and one by Yeo, which could be Yeo or any director nominated by her.

AirAsia rationalised that acquiring a majority stake in T&Co would allow the carrier greater management control of T&Co.

It said the acquisition would also allowed Airasia to be more focused on product development and that coffee and tea were an important part of the inflight experience.

“A good coffee and tea offering would help AirAsia differentiate its brand in an increasingly competitive market.

“It would also allow AAB to raise premiums on beverages as well as improve the margin,” it said.

Lu Hao, speaking at an investment promotions event targeted at China-based Singapore businessmen in Beijing, said he hopes to collaborate in areas such as food processing, real estate, tourism and health.

The province, which grew at 5.7 per cent last year compared with 6.9 per cent nationally, would also welcome investments in the hi-tech and financial industries, where it lacks expertise.

Lu said Singapore and Heilongjiang could leverage each other’s strengths to jointly explore opportunities in Russia’s Far East.

The governor, who is a rising political star, told the businessmen that the growth potential of the province was not “well understood”, and it was making progress with its shift away from an overreliance on its energy sector.

Lu said growth was dragged down mostly by the energy sector, where the Daqing oilfield – China’s biggest – suffered from the double whammy of lower production and a sharp drop in global oil prices.

“This is the biggest challenge that we face in our economic transformation,” he said.

Despite much slower growth in industry, agriculture and services registered healthy growth that was 1-2 percentage points higher than the national average.

Financial services, telecommunications and postal services grew by more than 20 per cent last year.

Growth in external demand brought about by tourism has also contributed to the growth of the service sector, he added.

Singapore’s Ambassador to China, Stanley Loh, said Singapore’s actual investments in Heilongjiang stood at about 2 billion yuan (Bt11 billion) from 141 projects.

This was relatively small, compared with Singapore’s investments in coastal provinces such as neighbouring Liaoning, which attracted US$5.7 billion (Bt201 billion) worth of investments as of last month.

Singapore property giant CapitaLand, one of the first movers into this nascent market for Singapore businesses, accounted for nearly 70 per cent of Singapore’s investment in the province with its two shopping malls in the capital of Harbin.

Other major players are agribusiness Wilmar International, which has a food processing factory in Harbin, and Global Logistic Properties, with a logistics warehouse in the city.

Wong Car Wha, regional general manager of CapitaLand Mall Asia’s northeast and central China, said while its two malls were successful now, the projects had suffered from delays and needed extra funding due to construction problems faced in the winter.

“We were not familiar with Harbin’s weather. But we hope to learn from these experiences and do better in our future projects in Heilongjiang,” he said.

According to the construction ministry’s department of housing and real estate market management, the domestic property market might see a shortage of mid-tier housing supply, and abundant supply in the high-end segment in late 2016.

Although the market is on a stable recovery path, this is a matter of concern as a majority of the local citizens want affordable small or medium-sized apartments.

In addition, the recent rise in the number of secondary investors, who purchase houses for rent, for example, might trigger a wave of speculation, threatening the recovery of the realty market.

The Vietnam Real Estate Association said the property market did not see many new housing projects during the first half of this year, while the supply mainly came from sale openings of exiting projects, resulting in a rise in housing prices.

Apartment prices of a number of completed or soon-to-be-operational projects in downtown Hanoi rose by 3 to 5 per cent against the previous year. Statistics of the municipal department of construction revealed that prices of high-end apartments in downtown districts increased by 1 to 2 per cent.

In HCM City, the prices of the affordable segment in the suburbs remained stable, while those of the high-end segment rose by up to 15 per cent compared with the same period in 2014, according to HCM City Real Estate Association.

However, transactions remained flat recently in the two major cities that had the largest housing supplies.

Reductions in property inventories also slowed down in the first half of this year as a number of stockpiles were in areas far from downtown areas, along with infrastructure shortage. The ministry’s statistics showed that the value of the property stockpile dropped 13.4 trillion dong (US$599 million) during the past six months, bringing the value of the inventories to touch 37.5 trillion dong as of the end of June, which was 1.93 trillion dong lower than the same period last year.

Against this backdrop, the construction ministry recently asked the two cities to reassess housing demand before approving housing development projects to ensure a balance in supply and demand and to stabilise the market.

In another effort to ensure the supply-demand balance, the construction ministry asked localities to promptly draw up housing development plans in line with the Housing Law, which would serve as a basis for licensing housing projects.

Tran Du Lich, deputy head of HCM City’s National Assembly Deputy Delegation, said the government should take land prices into consideration. Land prices were too high, which discouraged developers to invest in social housing projects. In addition, housing development must be in line with infrastructure development, Lich said.

Although a number of experts have in recent months decried the possibility of a “property bubble’ in the making, attention must be given to potential imbalanced development.

The property market is still haunted by the property bubble that burst and pushed the market into a stagnant period that lasted nearly a decade. The market did not start to see recovery till late 2014.

Where is the money?

To support home buyers when the property stimulus package, worth 30 trillion dong in preferential loans, neared its end, the prime minister signed a decision allowing low-income earners who want to buy houses this year to take loans from the Vietnam Bank for Social Polices at an annual interest rate of just 4.8 per cent, lower than the rate offered in the 30-trillion dong package.

Under the Government’s Decree 100/2015/ND-CP on social housing development and management, the state budget would supply 50 per cent of the funding, while the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies would be in charge of the remainder. However, there was a major question mark on how the funding for the preferential loans would be arranged.

Nguyen The Diep, vice chairman of the Ha Noi Real Estate Club, said detailed instructions were needed. “Good policy but no funding for implementation will undermine market confidence,” he said.

(US$1 = 22,550 dong as of 6/27/2016 via oanda.com)

It was part of a heavy sell-off across the board, with investors off- loading riskier assets and rushing to safe-haven assets such as gold, the Japanese yen and US dollar.

Transport giant ComfortDelGro lost seven cents to close 2.56 per cent lower at US$1.97.

City Developments (CDL) shed 4.37 per cent to US$6.12, while another property player, Ho Bee Land, lost 3.98 per cent to US$1.60 and Ascott Residence Trust fell 2.67 per cent to US$0.80. Sembcorp Industries closed 3.5 per cent lower at US$2.03.

And there is lingering fear that the sell-off will continue until there is greater clarity on how the British government intends to negotiate a formal exit from the European Union, say analysts.

“These stocks were sold amid an uncertain outlook for Britain, on how Brexit will pan out,” said IG market strategist Bernard Aw.

“Naturally, there are concerns about whether Britain will be able to sustain its economic growth and negotiate trade and investment deals… Investors will offload their risky assets until more clarity emerges from policymakers.”

Such a “risk-off” mindset should persist for some time, analysts noted. Along with the added uncertainty from British Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation, the Brexit contagion could spread to European Union (EU) nations such as France and Spain, both with strong nationalistic movements, said KGI Fraser Securities trading strategist Nicholas Teo.

“The fact that markets have moved so much (on Friday) highlights that nobody expected this.”

For Singapore companies in Britain, the most telling impact so far has been seen in the free-falling pound, which sank to its lowest level in over 30 years on Friday.

A weaker pound translates into lower revenue and earnings in Singapore dollar terms.

Britain and Ireland account for 25 per cent of ComfortDelGro’s revenue and 20 per cent of its profits, Maybank Kim Eng analyst Derrick Heng noted. CDL has 11 per cent of its assets in Britain and derives 12 per cent of revenue from there. A spokesman for CDL said it manages its foreign exchange exposure by a policy of matching receipts and payments, and asset purchases and borrowings in each country, which creates a natural hedge.

Other companies were also sanguine about the situation, with British membership in the EU expected to take two years to unravel.

A Sembcorp spokesman said it does not expect any significant impact on its British income, as its business there is mainly providing essential utilities on an industrial site. Property firms Rowsley and Heeton Holdings said their businesses would be largely unaffected.

“Britain still has its place in the world,” said Heeton Holdings chief executive Eric Teng.

Ronald Tay, chief executive of Ascott Residence Trust’s manager, noted that while corporate travel could be affected, there could be an increase in leisure travellers if the pound remains affordable.