Southeast #14: Scorecards, petrodollars, and mutations
Where perception meets design, and capital meets leverage.
It’s the eve of the Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year, as it’s known here) and then we are in for a long holiday.
It also coalesces with the Ramadan fasting period for Muslims.
During these times, I’m just thankful I can work from anywhere, including home.
I feel for you if you need to weather what will be unforgiving traffic on your way to work or back.
On Saturday, I pushed out an investigative piece unpacking the “hottest” penny stock right now, Velocity Capital.
This was the firm that made the Bloomberg exposes around the MACC and its chief Azam Baki.
The story is chart-heavy with a lot of nodes and links, or “spaghetti” as an acquaintance puts it. But it’s a good one (I’m biased).
Today’s Southeast covers:
The region’s corruption scorecard;
Where gulf petrodollars are concentrating;
And the mutation of internet giant Grab.
Southeast is a weekly section where I track money and power in the region. In many ways this is somewhat a detox from purely Malaysian content but one that also helps me see the bigger picture.
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Transparency International released its 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index this week.
The global average dropped to 42 points, a new low for the past decade. Only five countries worldwide now score above 80, down from twelve a decade ago.