U.S. equity futures jumped and Asian stocks looked poised for gains amid tentative steps to restart the American economy and progress on the fight against the coronavirus. Contracts on the S&P 500 climbed over 3% as President Donald Trump moved to outline plans for the reopening and investors assessed a report that Gilead Sciences Inc. is seeing improvements in coronavirus sufferers taking its drug. Shares of Boeing Co. surged 7% after-hours after saying it will resume commercial plane production at a plant near Seattle next week, while Gilead was up 15% in late trading. Japanese futures pushed higher and the dollar slipped.

Real estate investment trusts listed on the Singapore Exchange (S-Reits) will soon benefit from new measures that will give them greater flexibility to manage their cash flows and raise funds amid an operating environment made challenging by Covid-19. These measures announced comprise an extension of the deadline for distribution of taxable income by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras), as well as a raising of the leverage limit and deferment of new regulatory requirements by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Soilbuild Business Space Reit posted a 26.3 per cent drop in distribution per unit (DPU) to 0.883 cent, down from the 1.198 cent it paid out a year ago. The manager said that in view of the Covid-19 situation, it had excluded some capital distributions to conserve the Reit’s capital. In particular, it had decided to defer capital distributions relating to rental incentives and a rental guarantee provided by the vendors.

StarHub apologised "unreservedly" for the inconvenience caused by the intermittent disruption of its home broadband services to some of its customers on Wednesday, and is offering affected customers a one-time 20-per-cent rebate on their monthly home broadband fee. This is equivalent to six days of free home WiFi service, it said.

Breadtalk Group said that as at 5pm, its offeror had amassed acceptances representing about 97.77 per cent of the total number of shares in the food and beverage company. The company's founder and chairman George Quek is making an offer to buy back all of the issued ordinary shares at 77 cents a piece through BTG Holding, which he owns with his wife Katherine Lee and Minor International, a hospitality and leisure company listed in Thailand.

Perennial Real Estate Holdings is divesting its entire 30-per-cent stake in 111 Somerset, known locally as TripleOne Somerset, to gambling mogul Stanley Ho's Shun Tak Holdings for S$155.1 million in cash. 111 Somerset is a prime integrated development, comprising two premium-grade office towers and a retail podium. It is located in the Orchard Road precinct and next to Somerset MRT station, and is also near the affluent Devonshire and River Valley residential areas.

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