CASE STUDY
Prepared for Academic and Policy Research Purposes
November 2025
- Executive Summary
This case study examines a constellation of concurrent capital market reforms introduced by Singapore’s regulatory ecosystem in late 2025, encompassing the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP), the SGX–Nasdaq dual-listing bridge, and structural changes to SGX trading mechanics. Collectively, these initiatives represent a deliberate and coordinated policy response to longstanding criticisms of Singapore’s equities market — namely, low retail participation, insufficient liquidity, and limited international visibility.
The reforms carry significant implications for Singapore’s positioning as a premier Asian financial hub, its competitiveness relative to Hong Kong and Tokyo, and its capacity to attract high-quality listings from high-growth companies across the Asia-Pacific region. - Background and Context
2.1 Singapore’s Equities Market: Structural Challenges
Despite Singapore’s unambiguous success as a global centre for foreign exchange, commodities, and fixed income markets, its equities market has faced persistent structural headwinds. Average daily securities market turnover on the SGX has lagged comparator exchanges, and the market has seen a secular decline in IPO activity relative to regional competitors. A combination of factors — including a fragmented retail investor base, high per-share prices deterring small investors, and limited cross-border capital access — has constrained the market’s depth and dynamism.
The regulatory impetus for reform accelerated following MAS’s publication of its Equities Market Review Group recommendations in 2023, which identified institutional mechanisms to broaden investor participation and enhance Singapore’s attractiveness as a listing venue.
2.2 Macroeconomic and Geopolitical Context
The reforms also unfold against a backdrop of intense geopolitical competition for financial flows in the Asia-Pacific. As companies and capital managers seek jurisdictions offering political stability, regulatory transparency, and access to both Asian and Western investor pools, Singapore occupies a uniquely advantageous position — provided it can credibly signal deep, liquid, and accessible markets. The SGX–Nasdaq bridge, in particular, directly addresses this dual-access demand. - Key Policy Initiatives
3.1 MAS Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP)
The EQDP represents the MAS’s most direct intervention in developing the fund management ecosystem around Singapore-listed equities. Under its second tranche, MAS placed S$2.85 billion with six external asset managers, bringing total programme allocations to S$3.95 billion across nine managers.
Parameter Details
Total EQDP Allocation (Batch 1 + 2) S$3.95 billion
Second Tranche Allocation S$2.85 billion
Number of Managers (Batch 2) 6
Selected Managers (Batch 2) BlackRock, Lion Global Investors, Amova Asset Management and others
Programme Objective Increase institutional investment in Singapore-listed equities
By mandating that external managers deploy capital specifically into Singapore equities, MAS seeks to generate sustained institutional buying pressure, improve price discovery, and create a self-reinforcing cycle whereby improved liquidity attracts further listings and investor interest.
The complementary S$30 million ‘Value Unlock’ programme addresses the supply side of this equation — equipping listed companies with the governance and communications infrastructure to better engage investors and optimise capital allocation, including regulatory clarity on forward-looking disclosures.
3.2 SGX–Nasdaq Dual-Listing Bridge
The partnership between Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Nasdaq — slated for launch by mid-2026 — introduces a harmonised regulatory framework enabling companies to list simultaneously on both exchanges using a single set of offering documents. The initiative specifically targets Asian growth companies with a minimum market capitalisation of S$2 billion that aspire to access US investor pools without abandoning their regional investor relationships.
Feature Detail
Target Companies Asian growth companies, market cap ≥ S$2 billion
Expected Launch Mid-2026
Key Innovation Single harmonised offering document for both exchanges
Capital Access Simultaneous access to North American and Asian capital pools
Regulatory Benefit Reduced duplication, streamlined approval process
From a theoretical standpoint, the dual-listing bridge represents an institutional arbitrage mechanism — enabling companies to capture valuation premiums available in US markets (particularly for technology and growth-oriented businesses) while preserving home-market investor relationships in Asia. For Singapore, it positions SGX as a natural first port of call for Asian companies with global ambitions, a role historically dominated by Hong Kong.
3.3 SGX Board Lot Reduction
Effective under the announced reforms, SGX will reduce the board lot size for securities priced above S$10 from 100 units to 10 units. This structural change lowers the minimum investment threshold by a factor of ten, making blue-chip and index-constituent stocks meaningfully more accessible to retail investors.
Metric Before Reform After Reform
Board Lot Size (stocks > S$10) 100 units 10 units
Minimum Investment (S$20 stock) S$2,000 S$200
Minimum Investment (S$50 stock) S$5,000 S$500
Last Board Lot Change January 2015 (1,000 → 100 units) —
Beyond the immediate affordability benefit, the reform facilitates a modernisation of SGX’s post-trade custody model — enabling broker custody accounts that support portfolio management, fractional trading, and robo-advisory services. These downstream capabilities are essential for Singapore’s fintech ecosystem to remain competitive with regional platforms in markets such as Australia, which has seen explosive retail participation growth driven by fractional investing infrastructure.
- Impact Analysis
4.1 Impact on Market Liquidity
The three initiatives collectively target liquidity from both the institutional and retail dimensions. The EQDP directly injects institutional capital; the board lot reduction democratises access; and the dual-listing bridge is expected to attract high-profile listings that generate secondary market trading activity. The interaction effects are potentially significant: institutional depth provides price stability that makes retail participation less risky, while retail breadth reduces bid-ask spreads and improves continuous price discovery.
4.2 Impact on Singapore’s IPO Ecosystem
Singapore has demonstrated strong IPO momentum in 2025, having raised over S$2 billion year-to-date including the notable UltraGreen.ai US$400 million listing. The SGX–Nasdaq bridge could substantially amplify this trajectory by expanding the addressable issuer universe to companies that previously viewed a Singapore-only listing as precluding adequate US investor access. If successfully implemented, the bridge may catalyse a structural re-rating of SGX as a listing venue, with positive spillover effects on deal flow, underwriting activity, and legal and advisory fee income within Singapore’s financial services sector.
4.3 Impact on Retail Investor Participation
Singapore’s retail investor participation rate in equities has historically lagged peer markets. The board lot reduction, complemented by the enabling of fractional trading infrastructure, addresses this directly. Lower entry thresholds reduce the psychological barriers associated with committing substantial capital to individual securities, particularly for younger, wealth-accumulating investors. Over time, increased retail participation is expected to reduce the cyclicality of market volumes and provide a more stable demand base for SGX-listed issuers.
4.4 Competitive Positioning vs. Hong Kong
Perhaps the most consequential long-term implication of these reforms is their cumulative effect on Singapore’s competitive positioning relative to Hong Kong. For much of the past two decades, Hong Kong’s proximity to mainland Chinese capital — facilitated by the Stock Connect programmes and HKEX’s unique access to Chinese IPOs — gave it a structural advantage as Asia’s premier equities hub. However, geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory volatility, and national security concerns have increasingly caused international investors and issuers to reassess their exposure to Hong Kong-domiciled activities.
Singapore’s 2025 reforms, particularly the SGX–Nasdaq bridge, directly exploit this window of opportunity by offering an alternative pathway to simultaneous Asian and global capital access — without the geopolitical risk premium attached to Hong Kong. This positions Singapore to capture a meaningfully larger share of the Southeast Asian and broader Asian IPO pipeline over the medium term. - Critical Assessment and Risks
5.1 Programme Execution Risk
The EQDP’s effectiveness is contingent on asset managers’ ability to deploy capital productively — a constraint that may be binding given the relatively limited float of many SGX-listed companies. Large-scale institutional buying in a shallow market can distort prices and reduce the quality of price signals, potentially creating valuation anomalies that complicate future capital raising. MAS will need to ensure that deployment pacing is calibrated carefully.
5.2 Structural Limitations of the Dual-Listing Bridge
The dual-listing bridge’s minimum market capitalisation threshold of S$2 billion restricts eligibility to a relatively small cohort of Asian companies. Smaller high-growth firms — arguably those most in need of diversified capital access — are excluded. Moreover, the bridge’s success depends on the willingness of the US SEC and Nasdaq’s own listing requirements to accommodate harmonised documentation standards, introducing a regulatory coordination risk that is beyond MAS’s or SGX’s unilateral control.
5.3 Retail Participation and Investor Protection Tension
The democratisation of access through board lot reduction must be balanced against investor protection considerations. Lower financial barriers to entry may encourage participation from investors with insufficient risk literacy or diversification, increasing the potential for concentrated losses in individual securities. This tension requires MAS to complement the structural reforms with investor education initiatives and appropriately calibrated product disclosure standards. - Conclusion
Singapore’s 2025 capital market reform programme represents a strategically coherent and empirically grounded response to the structural challenges facing its equities market. The simultaneous deployment of institutional capital via EQDP, the democratisation of retail access through board lot reduction, and the creation of a cross-border dual-listing infrastructure via the SGX–Nasdaq bridge reflects a sophisticated multi-stakeholder policy design.
The reforms are likely to generate measurable improvements in market liquidity, IPO activity, and retail participation over a three-to-five-year horizon. The more transformative — and uncertain — prize is the potential for a structural re-rating of Singapore as Asia’s pre-eminent equities hub in the post-Hong Kong geopolitical landscape. Success on this dimension will depend not only on the quality of MAS and SGX’s execution, but on the broader macroeconomic environment and the continued willingness of international investors to assign a differentiated risk premium to Singapore-domiciled financial activities. - Key Data Points and References
Initiative Quantum / Target Timeline
EQDP Total Allocation S$3.95 billion (9 managers) Ongoing
EQDP Batch 2 S$2.85 billion (6 managers) November 2025
Value Unlock Programme S$30 million November 2025
SGX–Nasdaq Dual-Listing Bridge Market cap ≥ S$2 billion Mid-2026 (expected)
Board Lot Reduction 100 → 10 units (stocks > S$10) To be announced
Singapore IPO Proceeds (2025 YTD) Over S$2 billion As of November 2025
Nvidia Q3 Revenue (context) US$57.01 billion Q3 FY2026