16/07/2026

BIZ & FINANCE THURSDAY | JULY 16, 2026

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China turns to EV taxis to ease Hormuz oil shock o Record ride-hailing demand is helping curb fuel consumption despite robust travel activity

Stripe, Advent offer to buy PayPal for more than US$53 billion NEW YORK: Payments company Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal Holdings Inc for US$60.50 per share, in a deal that would value the payments company at more than US$53 billion (RM216 billion), two people said. The offer, submitted earlier this month, is backed by about US$50 billion in committed financing from banks, said one of the people. The offer represents around a 28% premium to PayPal’s closing share price on Tuesday. The people, who are familiar with the matter, declined to be named as the deal discussions are confidential. PayPal, Stripe and Advent declined to comment. The proposal follows an initial approach made in early April, the sources said. Stripe and Advent have not received a response from PayPal and are seeking to advance discussions in the coming weeks, the sources added. Under the proposal, Stripe and Advent would jointly own PayPal, with each holding an equal stake, rather than breaking up the company, the people said. There is no certainty the approach will result in a transaction, they added. PayPal shares were last up 15% in premarket trading. Founded in the late 1990s, PayPal was an early player in digital payments, but has faced increasing competition as consumers have embraced alternative payment methods and rivals such as Apple Pay and Google Pay have gained market share. It has spent the past several years grappling with slowing growth and intensifying competition in digital payments, wiping out much of the value it gained during the pandemic. The company’s market capitalisation peaked at about US$360 billion in 2021 and fell to as low as roughly US$36 billion this year. It has lost more than 40% of its market value over the past 12 months. After taking over in March, PayPal CEO Enrique Lores started a sweeping turnaround exercise to simplify the payments provider and sharpen its focus on growth. In April, the company split its operations into three units covering checkout, consumer financial services Venmo, and payments and crypto, while making a series of management changes. The potential PayPal transaction, if completed, will add to the recent M&A activity in the global payments sector, where buyers have pursued targets amid rapid changes in financial technology and the rise of artificial intelligence. Payment companies are also increasingly seeking scale through M&A as well as exposure to faster-growing segments such as cross-border and business-to-business payments amid slower growth for traditional payment processing. In 2025, Global Payments agreed to acquire rival Worldpay from FIS and private equity firm GTCR for US$24.25 billion in a complex three-way deal. As part of that deal, GTCR sold its 55% stake and FIS exited its remaining 45% holding. The sector has also seen a steady stream of smaller deals, including the acquisition of Payoneer Global by Canadian payments firm Nuvei for US$2.75 billion. Nuvei is backed by Advent International and other private equity firms. Mastercard is exploring the sale of a majority stake in its UK payments subsidiary Vocalink back to British banks as it responds to concerns about a critical asset being under US ownership, the Financial Times reported this week. PayPal’s revenue rose 7% to US$8.35 billion in the first quarter, beating analysts’ average estimate of US$8.05 billion. On a currency neutral basis, total payment volumes jumped 8% over a year ago to about US$464 billion. Lores outlined plans in May to leverage artificial intelligence to streamline operations across the company and eliminate duplication in workforce layers, but did not provide additional details. The company has said these initiatives would save about US$1.5 billion over the next two to three years, adding it will reinvest that amount to drive new growth. – Reuters

BEIJING: China has an increasingly important buffer against oil price shocks: electric taxis. Across Chinese cities, taxi usage and ridesharing are booming. In May, people took 3.05 billion trips, with government data showing trips have grown 6% since the Iran war began at the end of February, versus March to May last year. The jump reflects a quirk of China’s transport structure: fares are falling despite gasoline prices rising. Analysts say a flood of new drivers searching for work in a sluggish economy combined with cheap electric cars is depressing fares, in turn attracting passengers who want to save on higher petrol costs. A part-time Beijing ride-hailing driver surnamed Li said fares have fallen 10% to 15% since he started six months ago. “Competition is intense,” the 36-year-old told Reuters at an electric vehicle charging station. The flip side can be seen on social media. Since gasoline prices began rising in March, hundreds of posts describe how travel by cab or rideshare is cheaper than driving. “Especially when gas prices are high, I’d rather take a taxi to places that are too far to bike to. That way, I don’t have to look for parking or pay for gasoline,” said Yang, a 45 year-old owner of a petrol car, who only gave her surname. With the electrification of taxis, the rideshare boom adds to evidence that

That flexibility partly explains how China has managed to slash oil imports, which fell 41% in June versus a year ago, without extensively tapping its reserves. By doing so, China has freed up oil cargoes in a war constrained global market and helped keep a lid on oil prices. “The conflict may have accelerated behavioural changes that were already underway, leaving China structurally less dependent on oil than the market has historically assumed,” J.P. Morgan analyst Natasha Kaneva said in a note on July 2. That possibility will be tested as prices for transport fuels in China fall back to pre-war levels. J.P. Morgan expects gasoline demand to continue dropping in 2027, but at a slower pace than this year, forecasting a year-on-year decline of 50,000 barrels per day compared with this year’s decline of 150,000 bpd. Zhang, 45, an electric car and hybrid owner who only gave her surname, said she usually drives her hybrid in battery mode when fuel prices are high. “When I saw prices had fallen recently, I went to fill up the tank for my hybrid,” she said.

transportation in China is becoming less dependent on oil, insulating it against oil shocks such as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. About half of China’s 1.3 million-strong taxi fleet is electric, according to the Transport Ministry, and in major cities it is closer to 100%. Didi, the main ridesharing app, said it registered another 2 million hybrid or electric cars last year taking its total non-fossil fuel fleet to 8 million cars, with EVs doing 75% of all mileage. As a result, China burned 10% less gasoline and 14% less diesel in May than a year earlier, even though road freight rose 2%, and road travel during the May Day long weekend hit an all-time high. Greenpeace forecasts that 90% of taxi and ridesharing mileage will be electric by 2035. “As fuel prices have gone up, people are driving their own petrol cars less,” said Daizong Liu, East Asia director at the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy in China. “But overall travel demand is still increasing, so more trips are shifting to public transport, such as taxis and the subway.”

Nearly half of the country’s taxi fleet is now battery-powered, with major cities approaching full electrification. – UNSPLASH PIX

DBS targets over S$1 trillion wealth assets by 2030 SINGAPORE: DBS Group aims to grow assets under management (AUM) in its wealth business to more than S$1 trillion (RM3.2 trillion) by 2030, its unit’s head said, as Singapore’s biggest bank bets on rising Asian wealth and inflows into regional financial hubs. The target spans the lender’s retail and wealth segments and marks an increase of about S$400 billion from S$632 billion in wealth assets under management at the end of 2025. example the rise of wealth in Asia, and also the shift of wealth into Asia, I think these macro trends are what will be tailwinds.” Global banks have been ramping up their wealth offerings across Asia to tap the region’s rapidly growing affluent population. Singapore has been a key beneficiary of that push. Its safe-haven appeal has fuelled a steady stream of wealth inflows at a time of heightened geopolitical and economic uncertainty, lifting the fortunes of the city state’s three largest banks. advisers and platform engineers by the end of 2028, mainly across its core markets of Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia and Taiwan. “It’s not just about the frontliners. We need the engineers, the tech people, the platform people to create that capability and the capacity,“ said Shee. “Our wealth continuum is about really winning in every segment... it’s about serving them most appropriately in that segment, because as I said, customers are not homogeneous.”

“From full year 2015 to 2025, in 10 years, we grew our AUM by S$400 billion. Looking at the traction, our ambition now is to grow the same S$400 billion by half the time,“ Shee Tse Koon, DBS’s group executive and group head of consumer banking and wealth management, said at a media briefing. “Many of the macro trends that we see, for

As of May, the number of newly onboarded high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients at DBS, which banks more than a third of single-family offices established in Singapore, had risen 20% from a year earlier. The lender is also planning to hire more than 600 relationship managers or frontline

Last month, DBS announced that it would open 18 new wealth centres across Asia by the end of 2027 and upgrade 36 existing centres over the next 18 months, marking the largest physical expansion of its wealth franchise to date. – Reuters