TheChek News Flow

DAX:

MDAX:

SDAX:

EU grant applications hit record in 2025 amid surge in interest from American academics

The EU has seen a surge in interest from American academics applying for grants, as US researchers increasingly look for options abroad in response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education.

The EU received a record number of applications for its top research and innovation grants this year, including a tripling of US bids for a key fund compared with 2024.

“In general, it’s not positive what has happened,” the EU’s research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva told the Financial Times, referring to the situation in the US. “We are not celebrating what is happening with scientists, but we want to provide those scientists opportunities to continue their work.”

Trump’s attacks on higher education have included cuts in funding and restrictions on academic freedom, leading to initiatives from other countries to lure researchers abroad.

Applications to the European Research Council (ERC), the EU’s funding organisation for basic research, and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the EU’s initiative for doctoral and postdoctoral research, hit all-time highs in 2025.

Zaharieva did not go as far as saying Trump was helping Europe win the race for talent. “The fierce competition is about talent, not about funds,” she said. “Everyone wants to attract talented people.”

ERC grants aimed at early career researchers saw a 22 per cent increase in applicants compared with last year, with a record 4,807 proposals. Nearly 250 of those came from outside Europe, including 169 from the US — nearly triple the 2024 figure.

Applications for ERC grants targeting more senior researchers were up 31 per cent from last year and 82 per cent from 2023.

Meanwhile, the MSCA postdoctoral fellowships received 17,058 applications — the most for any funding initiative in the 40-year history of the EU’s research framework programmes.

For the Bulgarian commissioner, the increased interest from researchers in Europe is part of the “Choose Europe” strategy launched in May, which wants to help innovative companies to operate and grow in the bloc.

Earlier this week, she had a meeting with several private investors to establish the Scaleup Europe fund, which is set to invest in the European companies in strategic sectors, such as artificial intelligence, quantum, semiconductor and biotech. Still, European tech companies have historically often had to turn to US markets for investment.

The potential private investors include Novo Holdings and Denmark’s EIFO sovereign wealth fund and Spain’s Criteria Caixa. The goal is for the fund to do its first investments in the spring of next year. The idea was to start with an initial budget of €2,5bn, Zaharieva said, which would then grow to €5bn.

The Trump administration has cancelled billions of dollars in federal research funding to US universities this year, as it seeks budget cuts overall and the elimination of grants on topics including diversity and climate change that it considers not aligned with its policies. 

It has frozen funding as a way to pressure academic institutions led by Harvard to overhaul their governance and promote “viewpoint diversity” on campuses, prompting several academics and students to seek places in other countries.

It has also imposed tougher disclosure requirements on universities abroad that receive US federal funding, including scrutiny of additional funding from other countries and controls over intellectual property.

Dealmaker chief is clinging to his ambition to build a pan-European banking powerhouse despite M&A roadblocks

At an event this year marking UniCredit’s new sponsorship deal with Ferrari’s Formula 1 team, the bank’s chief executive Andrea Orcel drew parallels between the two companies.

“These are two brands that started in Italy with dreams of creating something more global,” Orcel said. “In the case of Ferrari, truly global. And in the case of UniCredit, pan-European.”

However, his ambition for UniCredit is under threat. German opposition to an acquisition of Commerzbank by the Italian lender has forced Orcel to put takeover plans on hold, while Rome used extraordinary powers to block his attempt to buy smaller Milanese rival Banco BPM.

The setbacks raise questions about whether Orcel, a hard-charging dealmaker with a reputation for ruthlessness, will remain content running UniCredit in its current form, and whether Europe’s best-known M&A banker was wrongfooted in what should have been his natural territory.

He is clinging to his ambition of turning the bank into a regional powerhouse, telling the Financial Times that “when you talk about . . . the dream of Europe having large, pan-European banks, then we would be the first one to do it”.

But with two major targets off the table for now, analysts, investors and rivals want to know what Italy’s most valuable bank will do next.

Less than a year ago UniCredit believed its plan to seal two transformative deals was still on track, as it aimed to fully integrate BPM by June 2026 before launching a move on Commerzbank, according to people familiar with the matter.

But Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government deployed its so-called golden power — originally introduced to vet foreign takeovers of strategic assets — to block the swoop on BPM.

And while UniCredit rapidly built a 29 per cent stake in Commerzbank through share purchases and derivative transactions, opposition from the German bank’s board and Berlin — as well as a jump in Commerzbank’s market value — has forced it to wait until 2027 before deciding on a full takeover. Critics argue that career dealmaker Orcel misjudged the political mood.

“Banks are sovereign assets and important assets for a country,” said one senior European banker. “You cannot just decide to force your way in if a government is not comfortable. He wanted to push his way forward without taking into account the local sensitivities, which are important. He misread the political context.”

Another seasoned M&A banker was more blunt, saying the UniCredit chief “could have got these deals done if he was more conciliatory and there was less hubris”.

Orcel disagrees, saying Berlin was initially supportive of the plan by UniCredit — which already has a presence in Germany via its HypoVereinsbank subsidiary — to build a stake in Commerzbank.

Meanwhile, a postmortem carried out by UniCredit’s board concluded that political manoeuvring by the Italian government after the bank moved on BPM made it almost impossible for the bid to succeed.

“We didn’t expect the depth of political opposition around BPM given how much the transaction made sense, nor the way the golden power was ultimately applied,” Orcel said.

Despite the M&A roadblocks, shareholders and analysts remain bullish on UniCredit. Since Orcel took charge in April 2021 its share price has climbed almost 650 per cent — eclipsing its large European peers over the same period.

The stock has risen two-thirds this year, and analysts see further upside despite challenges. Of the 23 analysts covering the company, only two assign UniCredit a negative rating, according to Bloomberg.

Andrew Coombs, an analyst at Citigroup, said UniCredit had “significantly enhanced” its performance through steps including robust cost discipline, and that factors such as low credit provisions, rising fee income and efficient capital deployment should “drive further improvement” in returns.

But the boost to European lenders’ net interest income — the difference between the interest banks receive from borrowers and pay out to depositors — from higher rates in recent years is starting to wane. UniCredit’s NII fell more than 5 per cent in the three months to the end of September compared with the same period last year.

Orcel thinks the sector is facing a tougher period following several years of bumper returns. “The market has gone from being very pessimistic on European banks to potentially being overly optimistic,” he said. “We are preparing for a tougher environment.”

One thing that will help UniCredit is its stakebuilding in Commerzbank and Greece’s Alpha Bank, which Coombs at Citi forecasts will together add an incremental €800mn a year in revenues.

UniCredit’s 29.5 per cent stake in Alpha, which the Greek government has supported, raises the prospect of the Italian bank launching a bid for the €8.1bn lender, although Orcel has said that for “the time being” it will “remain at a level of participation below a full offer”.

But compared with some of its large European peers, UniCredit lacks comparable business lines in areas such as asset management, insurance, payments and investment banking that generate fee income.

The Italian lender’s previous leadership rationalised the bank by offloading subsidiaries, including the sale of asset manager Pioneer to Amundi and of online brokerage Fineco.

With few obvious large M&A targets left, industry observers speculate that Orcel’s focus will now turn to this fee-earning side of the group.

“In Italy, there are practically no [retail M&A] options left for UniCredit,” said a senior executive at another Italian bank. “It will now be about developing in areas like asset management, private banking, investment banking, expanding its international footprint and continuing to grow organically.”

Orcel, who says he will soon outline a growth plan for the bank in Italy that will be “all organic”, is already in the process of rebuilding parts of the bank’s asset management unit.

UniCredit has a contract with Amundi that allows the Italian lender to distribute the French asset manager’s products until 2027. Amundi, meanwhile, manages almost €70bn in assets for UniCredit in Italy.

Orcel is seeking to increase the portion of fees the bank takes in on the sale of funds, and has previously said UniCredit may not renew the Amundi contract. If it pulls its funds from Amundi, the Italian lender would have to decide whether it wants to manage them internally or strike a new deal with another asset manager.

“We have and will continue to build our own capabilities internally,” Orcel said, adding that when the bank achieves the capability “we will focus more on how we can increase the assets under management”. He said the focus would then turn to private banking, with the lender looking to expand the business by increasing its “mass affluent” client base.

He added that the bank would also focus on accelerating improvements to its technology to rival the “best-in-class fintechs”, as well as targeting a number of products and geographies that were deserted during the post-financial crisis retrenchment, including expanding in eastern Europe.

“I understand that it’s not as exciting as 2022-2023 when we were doubling net profit every year,” he said. “It’s not as exciting as last November when we announced a bid on BPM. But that’s how it is.”

Orcel added that he was “not excluding that we will bid on other things but, for now, we are exclusively focused on beating peers on profitable growth and outsized distributions”.

He also pointed out that M&A deals can act as a distraction, saying it had sometimes been “a struggle” to keep his management team and the organisation focused and disciplined on the basics over the past year amid the wrangling over BPM.

Meanwhile, UniCredit’s Russian business continues to pose a strategic problem for the group. Orcel previously said the bank’s commitment to leave the country was “absolutely clear” but was being held up by legal and regulatory hurdles imposed by Moscow.

He told the FT that efforts to wind down the unit — something it has come under pressure from the European Central Bank to accelerate — were ongoing, adding that it would be “practically eliminated” from the group by next year.

Shareholders appear sanguine about the position in which the bank finds itself. UniCredit has pledged to distribute at least €9.5bn to investors through share buybacks and dividends for its 2025 financial year, with Orcel saying in September that the bank had excess capital of €10bn-€11.5bn.

“He’s shown immense discipline,” said Cole Smead, chief executive of UniCredit shareholder Smead Capital Management. “Orcel has been the best at allocating capital among European banks. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Another senior Italian investment banker cautioned that Orcel would lose leverage if he handed the excess capital to shareholders. “If he returns all of the capital, he loses the notion that he can pull off a big M&A deal.”

For all the challenges and setbacks, Orcel appears undeterred in his mission.

“UniCredit is a strange, wonderful animal,” he said. “We have a logo on the Ferrari. [We have] . . . the best income ratio and return on equity of our peers. The job is so fulfilling.”

In the midst of an unprecedented AI buildout, Meta is spending more than most. The company is building two massive data centers, and reporting indicates there will be as much as $600 billion in spending on U.S. infrastructure over the next three years.

Those figures might not raise eyebrows in Silicon Valley, but they’re starting to make Wall Street nervous.

The issue came to a head this week as Meta reported quarterly earnings, which showed the company’s operating expenses jumping $7 billion year-over-year and nearly $20 billion in capital expense. It was the result of intense spending on AI talent and infrastructure, which has yet to bring in meaningful revenue for the company. When analysts pressed for more specifics, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear the spending was just getting started.

“The right thing to do is to try to accelerate this to make sure that we have the compute that we need, both for the AI research and new things that we’re doing, and to try to get to a different state on our compute stance on the core business,” Zuckerberg told analysts on the call. “Our view is that when we get the new models that we’re building in MSL in there and get like truly frontier models with novel capabilities that you don’t have in other places, then I think that this is just a massive latent opportunity.”

If his goal was to reassure investors, it didn’t work. By the end of the call, Meta’s share price had plummeted in value. Two days later, the rout has only deepened. The Meta’s stock dropped 12% by the closing bell on Friday, representing more than $200 billion in lost market cap.

It’s dangerous to read too much into stock prices, and in strict financial terms, Meta’s quarterly earnings weren’t that bad. ($20 billion in quarterly profit is nothing to complain about.) But this was the first quarter in which Meta’s aggressive AI spending on both talent and infrastructure had a visible impact on the company’s bottom line. Even more alarming was that, aside from a lot of enormous data centers and well-compensated AI researchers, it wasn’t clear what the money actually bought.

Analysts pressed Zuckerberg on why he was spending so much on AI, and when they could expect to see revenue from the growing spending. But the call came at an odd spot in Meta’s planning, with no clear budget for projected spending and no available product that could anchor a revenue forecast. As a result, Zuckerberg was left with only general claims about the promise of AI.

“There are going to be all kinds of new products around different content formats, and we’re starting to see that,” he asid during the call. “And then there are the business versions of all these too, like business A … the other part is how more intelligent models are just going to improve the core business and improve the recommendations that we make across the Family of Apps and improve the recommendations in advertising.”

Meta isn’t the only company spending billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, so it’s worth teasing out why this same spending isn’t spooking investors at Google or Nvidia, both of which had a great quarter. OpenAI is the biggest offender, spending the same amount with far less financial cushion than Meta.

There really are concerns that we’re creating a bubble, and if we are, Meta’s core business will let it ride things out better than most.

But if you ask Sam Altman why he’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars on compute, he’ll tell you he’s operating one of the fastest growing consumer services in human history — and one bringing in $20 billion a year in revenue. We can argue about how sustainable the growth rate is (that’s a separate blog post), but there really is a fast-growing product at the bottom of all the OpenAI hype. A fast-growing ARR figure goes a long way to answer questions.

Meta doesn’t have a product like that, and it’s not clear where it’s going to come from.

The company’s most powerful AI product is the Meta AI assistant, which Zuckerberg noted on the call has more than a billion active users. But those numbers are surely juiced by the three billion active users on Facebook and Instagram, and it’s hard to see the current version of Meta AI as a competitor to ChatGPT. There’s also the Vibes video generator, which really did boost daily active users, but has limited business impact beyond that.

The most ambitious project is the Vanguard smart glasses released earlier this month. However, the glasses feel more like an extension of Meta’s Reality Labs work than a real attempt to harness the power of LLMs.

Put simply, these are promising experiments, not fully formed products.

It’s telling then that when he was pressed on infrastructure spending, Zuckerberg’s response wasn’t to point to the recent launches, but to focus on the next generation.

Zuckerberg stressed, while emphasizing the pending impact of the Superintelligence Lab’s new models, that he was very excited about new products.

“It’s not just Meta AI as an assistant,” he said. “We expect to build novel models and novel products, and I’m excited to share more when we have it.”

But this was an earnings call, not a product launch, so all he could say was that there would be more to share “in the coming months.”

As the market response showed that answer is wearing thin.

To be fair, it’s only been four months since Zuckerberg restructured his company’s AI team, and the new Superintelligence team hasn’t had time to launch an earthshaking AI product yet. But as the company spends billions of dollars to stay competitive in AI, there’s still no clear indication of what role Zuckerberg wants to play in the new industry.

Will Meta AI use the company’s detailed store of personal data to grow into a ChatGPT competitor? Is Vibes the first step in a consumer entertainment play, building off Meta’s targeted ad system? Or maybe Zuckerberg’s references to “business AI” are hints at a more detailed enterprise play?

So far, it’s anyone’s guess. Whatever the answer, the pressure is on Meta to find it — and soon.

Of all the big tech companies investing in AI, Google and Microsoft are the best positioned to handle the growing costs of the technology, judging from data disclosed this past week in September-quarter earnings.

Google and Microsoft generate more cash from their businesses than other big tech companies, including Apple. And they’re devoting a smaller percentage of that cash to capital expenditures for new AI data center construction than other companies. Meta Platforms, on the other hand, is the worst positioned.

Meta generates less cash than other big tech companies and is spending a bigger proportion of it on capital expenditures than either Google or Microsoft. And unlike Google, Microsoft and Amazon, Meta doesn’t have a cloud business that is renting AI-powered servers. Its best hope of paying for its huge investment in AI is to make vast improvements in its advertising business and other possible new products.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all reported a growing backlog of contracts at their cloud businesses, flowing from demand for AI services. That backlog will help pay for the new data centers. That reduces the risk for those companies of their heavy AI investments.

The three companies also have the benefit of hefty cash reserves. All three had around $100 billion in cash and short-term investments as of Sept. 30, more than twice Meta’s reserves.

This situation highlights the gamble Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking. He said this week he planned to significantly increase both capex and operating expenses in 2026 to try to front-load AI computing capacity, ensuring that Meta can develop leading AI models unconstrained by capacity shortages. Meta’s robust ad business has comfortably underwritten these investments so far, but the company’s spending means it can ill afford a slowdown in the digital ad market.

As the accompanying chart demonstrates, each of the big tech companies has reported rapid growth in the cash it generates in the past five years. All big companies use that cash for capex, as well as to buy back shares and pay dividends to shareholders. But for Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google, a rapidly growing portion has gone to capex to build new data centers and other equipment in the past two years.

Google has been the most aggressive in ramping up its capex, lifting it 187% from $32 billion in 2023 to the company’s projection this week of between $91 billion and $93 billion this year. But Google can easily afford it: the company’s cash production was up 30% for the first three quarters of the year to $112 billion. Wall Street analysts estimate the full year cash production figure will hit $157.5 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Microsoft is in a similarly strong position. In its fiscal 2025 year, ending in June, it generated $136 billion in cash and spent $64 billion on capex. When we recalculate its quarterly reports on a calendar 2025 basis—to compare it to the other companies—Microsoft is expected to generate about $155 billion in cash from operations this year and to spend about $77 billion in cash on capex, or about 49%. (Microsoft is committing more to capex than that number suggests, however, because it is paying for some equipment through finance leases.)

In contrast, Meta this year will spend 65% of the $109 billion it’s expected to generate from operations on capex. Amazon will spend even more—as much as 88% this year, we calculate, using analyst estimates for Amazon’s full-year cash from operations.

Amazon is in a different position than Meta, however. Firstly, its capex has historically been much higher than that of other tech companies, as the chart shows, because of its need to invest in warehouses and other facilities for its e-commerce business.

And Amazon is better able than Meta to afford its capex because of its giant cloud business, Amazon Web Services. Thanks to AWS, Amazon has a committed backlog of business that it knows will turn into revenue in the next few years. That backlog has risen 28% since the middle of last year to $200 billion as of Sept. 30. CEO Andy Jassy told analysts that figure didn’t include several new deals struck in October that haven’t yet been announced.

Google and Microsoft have also reported significant growth in their backlog. The accompanying chart compares the backlog between Google, Amazon and Oracle. The smaller cloud firm disclosed in early September that its backlog had skyrocketed to $455 billion as of Aug. 31, about three times what it was three months earlier.

That increase reflected a number of AI-related cloud deals it has struck in recent months, most prominently with OpenAI. These deals, which stretch over the next few years, are forcing Oracle to also invest heavily in new data centers. (Microsoft’s backlog number includes deals unrelated to Azure, which is why we left the company off our chart.)

George Tidmarsh, who resigned Sunday, is accused in a lawsuit of seeking a bribe and defaming a drug

A Food and Drug Administration official who resigned on Sunday was sued by a Canadian pharmaceutical company, which accused him of soliciting a bribe and tanking its stock with false statements as part of a revenge campaign against a former colleague.

Dr. George Tidmarsh was hired in July by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to lead the agency’s drug division, a top role regulating much of the country’s pharmaceutical industry that gave Tidmarsh a prominent perch in the Department of Health and Human Services headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Drugmaker Aurinia Pharmaceuticals filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland on Sunday evening detailing its accusations against an official at an agency that this year has faced upheaval and uncertainty in the form of DOGE cuts, leadership departures and a slew of new policies.

A lawyer for Tidmarsh, Joseph Galda, said that he didn’t solicit a bribe.

A spokeswoman for HHS, which wasn’t named as a party to the lawsuit, said Tidmarsh resigned Sunday morning after being placed on administrative leave Friday. The HHS Office of the General Counsel and the Office of the Inspector General were notified of “serious concerns about his personal conduct,” the spokeswoman said.

“Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” the spokeswoman said.

Tidmarsh in September posted on LinkedIn that an FDA-approved kidney drug, voclosporin, had “not been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients,” a highly unusual move for a government official in his position. The FDA said when it approved the drug in 2021 that the medicine had shown a “clinically meaningful benefit” in trials. Tidmarsh later took down the post and said he had been speaking in a personal capacity.

But the stock of Aurinia, the only maker of voclosporin, dropped 20% in a few hours, wiping out more than $350 million of market value, according to the lawsuit.

Aurinia and its U.S. subsidiary brought the suit against Tidmarsh, alleging defamation and injurious falsehood, and seeking damages for its losses, plus punitive damages.

Tidmarsh told the New York Times that he had been placed on administrative leave after he raised concerns about a new-fast track program for drugs. He said he was told he had been placed on leave because of an investigation into a LinkedIn post he wrote, the Times reported.

An HHS official said the personal conduct brought to the attention of HHS lawyers and the inspector general’s office related to the LinkedIn post.

Galda, Tidmarsh’s lawyer, said he didn’t have knowledge of the LinkedIn post and declined to comment on it.

Tidmarsh didn’t respond to requests for comment other than through his lawyer.

The unusual LinkedIn post followed years of antagonism from Tidmarsh directed at Aurinia board chair Kevin Tang, who once pushed Tidmarsh out of a chief executive role at a different company, the lawsuit alleged.

Tang, a pharmaceutical investor, and Tidmarsh first clashed in 2019 when, according to the lawsuit, Tang asked Tidmarsh to resign as CEO from La Jolla Pharmaceutical, where Tang was board chair. Tidmarsh stepped down, and a company press release from the time said Tidmarsh was leaving to “pursue other interests.”

Tang declined to comment.

Over the next several years, Tidmarsh sent a series of spiteful messages to Tang and his business associates, the lawsuit said. “You will be exposed,” he wrote in one text message to Tang quoted in the complaint. “Are you enjoying failure? Get used to it,” he wrote in another message included in the complaint.

Tidmarsh met Makary at a conference last October and helped prepare Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for his confirmation as National Institutes of Health director, he said in an FDA video this year. He was “working with the new FDA,” he said in a LinkedIn post in November, to remove from the market desiccated thyroid extracts, a product critical to another company led by Tang, American Laboratories Holdings. “I’m not powerless,” he told Tang in another message in December, according to the complaint.

Tidmarsh had previously worked as a director at American Laboratories from 2015 to around 2019. Between 2018 and 2025 the company paid him more than $22.5 million, according to the lawsuit.

In August, after Tidmarsh started work at the FDA, the agency warned patients away from the thyroid extracts and said it would take action against the products.

That same month, according to the complaint, Tidmarsh’s personal lawyer, Galda, emailed Tang: “It is my understanding,” he wrote, that American Laboratories “may have issues that require” extending for another 10 years an agreement between the company and Tidmarsh. Under the agreement, Tidmarsh had been receiving payments from the company for past services, and when he joined the FDA rerouted those payments to a limited liability corporation benefiting his sons to comply with ethics rules, according to an email included in the complaint.

The email from Galda “transparently reflects an attempt to extort and solicit a bribe,” the complaint alleged.

Galda said the email was taken out of context and is contradicted by other messages. He said he wasn’t referencing the thyroid extracts and that the email was meant to keep options open for Tidmarsh to help the company after he left the FDA.

After he received the email, Tang contacted law-enforcement officials through a lawyer, the complaint said.

A month later, Tidmarsh posted on LinkedIn his negative comments about voclosporin, used to treat lupus nephritis, a condition that can lead to kidney failure. The comments continued his campaign of retaliation against Tang and confused doctors and patients, the lawsuit alleged.

The plans are in the very initial stages, and a deal may or may not materialize

Two major Singaporean real-estate asset managers are exploring a merger that could create a US$150 billion property company.

Temasek-owned Mapletree Investments and CapitaLand Investment are considering a business combination, with plans potentially starting next year.

CapitaLand Investment had US$90 billion in assets under management as of August 13, 2025, while Mapletree had US$61.7 billion as of March.

Two of Singapore’s biggest real-estate asset managers are exploring a merger that could create one of Asia-Pacific’s top property companies with more than US$150 billion in assets under management, people familiar with the process said.

Temasek-owned Mapletree Investments and Singapore-listed CapitaLand Investment 9CI 0.38%increase; green up pointing triangle are considering a potential business combination, people familiar with the matter said. The two property developers are likely to start laying the groundwork for the process as early as next year, the people said.

The plans are in the very initial stages, and a deal may or may not materialize, the people said.

“CapitaLand Investment remains committed to delivering long-term shareholder value and routinely evaluates investment opportunities aligned with its strategy,” a spokesperson said, adding that the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.

Temasek and Mapletree Investments both declined to comment.

One person said the process is part of the recent moves by Temasek-owned entities to evaluate options for growing their businesses into larger, stronger global entities. Temasek owns 100% of Mapletree Investments and 54% of CapitaLand Investment.

In 2023, Temasek portfolio companies Keppel Offshore & Marine and Sembcorp Marine merged to form Seatrium, creating a unified entity that ranks among the world’s leading rig builders. In 2021, CapitaLand announced a comprehensive restructuring plan that brought together its multibillion-dollar fund-management and hospitality businesses.

As of Aug. 13, 2025, CapitaLand Investment had 117 billion Singapore dollars in assets under management, equivalent to around US$90 billion, held via stakes in seven listed real-estate investment trusts and business trusts. These include Singapore-listed CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust, CapitaLand China Trust, and CapitaLand India Trust. Its portfolio also includes asset classes such as retail, office, lodging, industrial, logistics, business parks, wellness, self-storage, data centers and private credit.

As of end-March, Mapletree Investments had 80.3 billion Singapore dollars in assets under management, or about US$61.7 billion. The group also manages three Singapore-listed REITs that include Mapletree Logistics Trust and Mapletree Industrial Trust. It also has nine private-equity real-estate funds with a portfolio across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the U.K., and the U.S.

Its parent, Temasek, is ranked among the top 15 sovereign wealth funds by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Temasek’s net portfolio value at the end of its fiscal year ended March 31 was US$324 billion.

The state-run firm owns stakes in some of the world’s biggest companies, including BlackRock, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore Airlines, and Singapore’s PSA International—one of the world’s largest port operators.