Asian stocks look set to extend a global rally amid broad gains for equities led by financial shares and end-of-month portfolio adjustments. The dollar held losses.

Futures pointed to modest advances in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong. U.S. stocks snapped four weeks of declines. S&P 500 futures edged higher. Banks led the S&P 500 Index to its biggest gain in two weeks as investors found buying opportunities after the gauge fell to its lowest since July last week. HSBC Holdings Plc added almost 9% after its biggest shareholder raised its stake, while an index of lenders rose the most a month. Shares in Europe rose the most in three months.

Agri-Food giant Olam International has obtained Singapore's first club loan pegged to the Singapore Overnight Rate Average (Sora) from DBS and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Singapore Branch (ICBC Singapore). Olam has the option to enter into a Sora cross-currency swap with DBS at the start of each interest period, giving added certainty on interest rates and swap SGD proceeds into USD, the three parties said in a joint statement on Monday.

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and News Corp Australia (NCA) have signed a three-year partnership to bring NCA's digital marketing service, News Xtend, to Singapore, the companies said in a joint statement on Monday. The partnership will expand mainboard-listed SPH's advertising network to include a one-stop, outcome-based digital marketing solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they added.

The long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) of Wilmar International's China unit, Yihai Kerry Arawana (YKA), has successfully raised about 13.93 billion yuan (S$2.81 billion) after the close of applications on Sept 25, said the company in a bourse filing. Wilmar had on Sept 24 said that the listing is expected to raise 13.9 billion yuan, with each YKA share at an issue price of 25.7 yuan. Investors appeared upbeat about the proposed listing of YKA on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange ChiNext Board, resulting in the IPO shares being oversubscribed.

The manager of Frasers Centrepoint Trust (FCT) is looking to undertake a private placement at an issue price of between S$2.35 and S$2.435 per unit, as well as a non-renounceable preferential offering at between S$2.34 and S$2.42 per unit. The proposed equity fundraising will partially finance the real estate investment trust's (Reit) acquisition of the remaining 63.11 per cent stake in AsiaRetail Fund from its sponsor, Frasers Property, and pare existing debts. Taken together, the placement and offering will raise at least about S$1.33 billion, and up to S$1.44 billion, the manager said in a bourse filing on Monday.

Mainboard-Listed Sunpower Group has secured manufacturing and services orders worth over 76 million yuan (S$15.3 million) from two repeat customers. Both projects are expected to be completed in 2021 and have a positive impact on the group's financial performance in FY2020 and FY2021, said Sunpower in a statement on Monday. Under its new contract with China-based Qixiang Tenda, which is in the field of propane dehydrogenation (PDH) in the petrochemical industry, Sunpower will provide heat exchangers for Qixiang Tengda's 700,000 tonne per year PDH plant.

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