Mixing conventional warfare with cyber: Merkel says that Russia sees hybrid warfare as a form of defence.
MarketWatch: Small-cap stocks benefited from a dovish lining to the US Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates this past week, but strategists warn it will take more to make these pricey stocks outperform their larger brethren in the long haul. - Reuters
Energy
Oil prices fell on Monday as rising US drilling activity and steady supplies from Opec countries despite touted production cuts pressured already-bloated markets. Prices for front-month Brent crude futures were 20 cents below their last settlement at 0025 GMT, at US $51.56 per barrel.
Top foreign stories
Germany's Merkel and Japan's Abe urge free trade with jabs at US: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke up for free trade at a major technology fair on Sunday with jabs clearly pointed at an increasingly protectionist United States. Both called for a free trade deal to be reached quickly between Japan and the European Union, in comments made after G-20 finance ministers and central bankers dropped a long-standing mention of open trade in their final communique after a two-day meeting in Germany. - Reuters
IBM and Wanda form China cloud computing partnership: IBM and a unit of China's property and entertainment conglomerate, Dalian Wanda Group, agreed on Sunday to team up to provide cloud services to Chinese companies, the US technology provider said. - Reuters
Reports: Unilever prepares US$7.4b sale of food brands: Unilever is preparing a 6 billion pound (US$7.44 billion) sale of some of its food brands, British newspapers reported on Saturday. The Anglo-Dutch company is planning to sell Flora margarine and Stork butter brands, reports say. - Reuters
Top local stories
Foreign funds are net buyers of construction and property stocks: Construction and property stocks rallied in a market that saw foreign funds becoming net buyers. During the week, foreign investors bought RM939.9mil worth of Malaysian equities.- StarBiz
Bumi Armada
in transition: Bumi Armada Bhd says the worst is over after incurring RM1.9bil in losses in financial year 2016. It says the current year will be “transitional”. It intends to fine-tune the organisation to be more efficient and lean. - StarBiz
Market regulators launch Asia-Pacific hub in Malaysia: The International Organisation of Securities Commissions, (IOSCO), which oversees markets worth over US$140 trillion, has launched a Asia-Pacific hub in Malaysia. Securities Commission chairman Tan Sri Ranjit Ajit Singh said the IOSCO Asia Pacific hub will be fully operational by the middle of this year. Ranjit is IOSCO board vice-chairman. - StarBiz
Banks’ gross impaired loan ratio seen higher: The gross impaired loan ratio of Malaysian banks is expected to be be higher at 1.8% this year, compared with 1.6% last year, although still lower than their Asean counterparts. - StarBiz
Malaysians spending less: Retail sales were down 0.3% year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2016, versus a high of 7.5% in the second quarter, says Retail Group Malaysia. Retailers are pessimistic about sales in the fist quarter this year based on those figures. - Edge FD
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