Tuesday, 28 July 2026 · SEA Deal Ticker

SEA Deal Ticker Tue, 28 Jul

Rigs, data centres, factories: SEA's hard assets find outside owners.

Offshore rigs are turning into a fund product: Apollo puts $1.5B into Keppel's offshore energy vehicle — TNGlobal

Apollo-managed funds anchor the S$3.7 billion programme. Keppel divests six operational rigs in 2026 for S$1.2 billion and four more through 2028, lifting funds under management by S$3.9 billion.

Positive-sum angle: Yards that once tied up capital in idle rigs can recycle it into new orders, while global energy investors gain a Singapore-domiciled route into Asian offshore capacity.
A hyperscale data centre funded by Islamic bonds: Sime Darby Property opens a $640M green sukuk — TNGlobal

The MYR 2.6 billion programme funds a hyperscale data centre in Elmina Business Park, due end-2027 and pre-let for 20 years to a multinational technology tenant, plus build-to-suit warehouses.

Positive-sum angle: Sukuk investors gain a shariah-compliant route into compute infrastructure, and Malaysian developers get a template for funding megawatt-scale assets without waiting on foreign project finance.
Owning the factory stopped being the point: Switzerland's Cicor buys Singapore EDMI's Johor plant for $20M — TNGlobal

Cicor pays $15 million to $20 million for EDMI Electronics in Johor, which handles final assembly for Asia-Pacific, and takes a long-term contract to build most of EDMI's smart meters.
Vietnam's engineers now run a Japanese trading house's AI: ITOCHU and FPT open a tech centre — TNGlobal

The virtual joint venture runs through ITOCHU's Hong Kong subsidiary CISD Asia and scales the CISD AI Agent, a multi-agent platform already deployed across more than 100 ITOCHU business units.

Positive-sum angle: Vietnamese delivery teams move up from outsourced coding to owning an enterprise AI platform, and the reference case makes the Japan-Vietnam corridor easier to sell to the next trading house.