Asian stocks looked set for modest gains Wednesday as investors weighed the spreading coronavirus against expectations for policy support. U.S. equities closed off their highs on reports of fresh antitrust scrutiny for tech firms.

Shares in Australia opened up as investors cheered earnings from the country’s biggest bank. Futures pointed higher in Hong Kong and Japan, which reopens after a holiday. Earlier, the S&P 500 Index pared gains amid reports the Federal Trade Commission is looking into acquisitions by some large technology firms, though still posted a fresh all-time high. Ten-year Treasury yields rose, while the dollar dropped for the first time in five sessions.

MAINBOARD-LISTED Singtel's Thai associate, Advanced Info Service (AIS), has won in arbitration against Thai telco TOT Public Company's claim for extra roaming revenue share.

CITING the outbreak of a deadly virus that has so far infected 47 people in Singapore, Thai Beverage Public Co (ThaiBev) has cancelled a shareholder meeting that was to have been held on Feb 28, the Mainboard-listed brewer announced on Tuesday.

MAINBOARD-LISTED property group Roxy-Pacific Holdings has taken a 49 per cent stake in a retail building in Tokyo, it disclosed in a bourse filing on Tuesday. Roxy-Pacific made the purchase through an injection of roughly US$10 million in investment company Vivel SG, which paid 5.2 billion yen (S$65.7 million) for the building at 23-10 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-Ku.

MAINBOARD-LISTED construction and civil engineering contractor Tiong Seng Holdings announced on Tuesday that its subsidiaries have bagged contracts for two private-home projects worth S$123.9 million in all, taking the group's construction order book to about S$1 billion until 2023.

CONSTRUCTION and property group OKH Global's net profit dwindled in the second quarter, as its share of contributions from associates turned negative, according to results on Tuesday. Net profit shrank to S$54,000 for the three months to Dec 31, 2019, down from S$3.99 million in the same period the year before, even as revenue stayed flattish at S$4.2 million.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR