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The forum, themed “Developing the International Maritime Financial Ecosystem within the Vietnam International Financial Center in Ho Chi Minh City,” took place at the VIFC-HCMC Building, 08 Nguyen Hue Street, District 1, and drew more than 100 senior delegates. Attendees included leaders from central ministries and agencies, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, representatives from coastal provinces (Da Nang, Khanh Hoa, Kien Giang), domestic and international financial institutions, port and logistics enterprises, and international organisations.

The day’s agenda focused on three headline moments: a strategic industry report by Roland Berger, titled “Vietnam Maritime Industry: A Strategic Opportunity for Breakthrough Growth,” which benchmarked leading global maritime financial hubs and mapped a roadmap to raise Vietnam’s domestic value retention from the current 4–5% to 15% by 2035; the official launch ceremony of the IMFE initiative within VIFC-HCMC; and a memorandum of understanding signed between VIFC-HCMC and Gemadept Corporation, owner and operator of Gemalink International Port in Cai Mep – Thi Vai, formalising Gemadept’s role as a founding lead of the initiative. The forum also saw the introduction of the first maritime financial products and initiatives to be developed within the VIFC-HCMC framework.

A seaport system of growing global weight

The ambition behind IMFE is grounded in the rapid rise of southern Vietnam’s port infrastructure. Ho Chi Minh City is home to Cat Lai Port — ranked among the world’s top 21, handling approximately 7.5 million TEUs annually — and Gemalink International Port in Cai Mep – Thi Vai, capable of receiving ultra-large container vessels. These existing assets are set to be joined by the Can Gio International Transshipment Port, a 571-hectare project with a projected capacity of 17 million TEUs per year, further deepening the city’s integration into global logistics and trade networks.

In 2025, the Ho Chi Minh City port system handled over 24 million TEUs, ranking 8th globally according to Lloyd’s List, and was associated with approximately USD 200 billion in import-export turnover, accounting for around 20% of Vietnam’s total trade value. Surrounding this physical infrastructure, a broad ecosystem of supporting services has expanded significantly, spanning cargo handling, warehousing, freight forwarding, customs clearance, and supply chain management. The total annual trade transaction value flowing through the region — encompassing goods, logistics services, and related financial demand – is estimated at over USD 1 trillion.

The financial gap: billions flowing through offshore centers

However, the scale of this physical activity stands in sharp contrast to the financial value Vietnam currently retains. Despite enormous cargo volumes, most high-value maritime financial services generating the largest profit margin including trade finance, ship financing, marine insurance and reinsurance, international payments, and logistics risk management continue to flow through developed offshore maritime financial centers. Vietnam currently captures only around 4–5% of these financial transaction values domestically, leaving an estimated USD 6–8 billion in potential value accessible but unrealised. To complete the maritime value chain and retain these economic benefits onshore, Vietnam must evolve beyond purely physical cargo transshipment. The gradual development of a comprehensive maritime financial ecosystem is an essential and inevitable strategic step.

IMFE: from vision to institutional launch

Against this backdrop, the IMFE initiative took shape as a core component of VIFC-HCMC, with Gemadept Corporation serving as a founding lead. The initiative was first introduced on September 12, 2025, during the symposium “Ho Chi Minh City – A Modern, High-End, High-Value Service Hub,” where Gemadept presented a strategic vision of integrating Vietnam’s deep-sea port infrastructure with a dedicated maritime financial ecosystem. To materialise that vision, the corporation cooperates with the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, leading to its official designation as a Strategic Member of VIFC-HCMC on February 11, 2026, at the Center’s Launching Ceremony. Today, as the operator of Gemalink — a major deep-sea gateway at Cai Mep – Thi Vai — Gemadept is focused on channeling high-value capital flows and advanced financial services directly into Ho Chi Minh City’s real maritime economy.

With this foundation in place, today’s forum pursues three concrete objectives: to officially launch the IMFE as a strategic platform designed to localise maritime financial capital and services, laying the groundwork for Ho Chi Minh City to emerge as one of the region’s leading maritime hubs; to connect financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, shipping lines, logistics enterprises, and international organisations within an integrated ecosystem, bringing the port-to-finance model to life in Vietnam; and to introduce the first maritime financial products and initiatives, creating mechanisms for Vietnamese enterprises to access financing, insurance, and risk management tools domestically rather than through foreign intermediaries.

“Ports such as Can Gio and Cai Mep-Thi Vai are transshipment hubs for cargo flows — VIFC-HCMC must become the transshipment hub for capital flows serving Vietnam’s maritime economy,” said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Huu Huan, Vice Chairman of VIFC-HCMC.

Hashtag: #VIFC

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

As AI, data analytics, and virtualization platforms continue to reshape how Singapore enterprises operate their IT infrastructure, storage is no longer merely a place to keep data. It has become the foundation behind core operational applications. As a result, organizations are placing greater demands on access speed, service continuity, and long-term operational stability. This is also why enterprises are increasingly seeking high-performance storage platforms that can maintain reliable operations over time.

“PAS7700 reflects Synology’s 25+ years of experience in storage and our close collaboration with enterprise customers to address evolving requirements for high availability, performance, and scalability,” said Bie-i Chu, Executive Vice President of the Synology NAS Group. “After a year of extensive real-world validation through our enterprise proof-of-concept program, PAS7700 is field-proven to deliver high reliability and performance, while helping customers lower total cost of ownership (TCO).”

A Storage Platform for Mission-Critical Systems
PAS7700 is equipped with dual controllers and 48 NVMe SSD bays in a 4U chassis, and can scale up to 1.65 PB of raw storage capacity with up to seven expansion units. The system supports both file and block storage and offers broad protocol support, including NVMe-oF, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, SMB, and NFS.

With up to 2,048 GB of memory* and 100GbE networking, PAS7700 delivers up to 2 million IOPS, latency of under 1 millisecond and sequential throughput of up to 30 GB/s.

PAS7700 is designed for environments that require real-time data processing, such as virtualization, databases and large-scale data processing environments. It also targets performance-intensive and always-on workloads such as VDI, EDA and AI.

In addition, the solution is well suited for organizations operating data-intensive infrastructure in sectors such as data centers, manufacturing, semiconductor design, game development, and healthcare. These environments typically process large volumes of data concurrently and require systems that can sustain consistent performance and continuous service availability.

Designed to Minimize System Disruption
One of PAS7700’s most notable strengths is its active-active architecture, which enables both controllers to operate simultaneously rather than relying on a traditional active-standby model. If one controller or a network component fails, the system can continue delivering services, significantly reducing the risk of business disruption.

The system is built with multiple protection layers to ensure high availability, including triple-parity RAID, mirrored write cache protection, IP failover, and automatic failover mechanisms.

PAS7700 also includes Continuous Availability Manager that enables enterprise IT teams to visually monitor the health status of each system component and detect and address issues quickly before they affect services.

Multi-Layer Data Protection for Enterprises
Synology places strong emphasis on enterprise data protection. PAS7700 supports Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs), providing hardware-level protection without compromising system performance.

The system also supports WORM folders and immutable snapshots, allowing snapshots to remain protected from unauthorized modification or deletion after creation, thereby reducing the risk of tampering and unauthorized data interference.

In addition, PAS7700 features Snapshot Replication and Hyper Backup that enable enterprises to build multiple layers of backup and recovery between production environments and secondary systems. This helps strengthen cyber resilience and improve data recoverability in the event of incidents or cyberattacks.

Lower Cost, Greater Efficiency
Beyond performance, Synology also addresses the challenge of optimizing long-term storage investment for enterprises. As many businesses in Singapore continue expanding their data infrastructure, virtual machines and internal AI workloads, the cost of high-speed storage is exerting increasing pressure on IT environments.

PAS7700 supports both inline and offline deduplication technologies to help reduce unnecessary data usage and extend SSD lifespan. This mechanism can significantly improve storage efficiency in large-scale data environments.

In the near future, the system will also support Synology Tiering, which automatically moves infrequently accessed data to high-capacity storage systems. This helps free up high-speed NVMe resources for active applications and hot data.

The entire platform runs on DSM Enterprise, Synology’s operating system developed specifically for enterprise storage, and is designed for environments that require high performance while maintaining intuitive management and operational simplicity.

PAS7700 is now available globally through Synology’s network of partners and distributors.

For more product information, please visit: www.synology.com/products/PAS7700.

*Memory module is upgradable to 1,024GB per node; 2,048GB for the whole PAS7700 system.

Hashtag: #Synology, #PAS7700

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Synology

Founded in Taiwan in 2000, Synology is a technology company specializing in network-attached storage (NAS), data backup and recovery, video surveillance, and networking solutions for businesses and individuals worldwide. Over the past two decades, Synology has continuously expanded its ecosystem to help users manage, protect, and unlock the value of data more effectively in the era of cloud, AI, and big data.

Synology’s core philosophy is to build a comprehensive hybrid-cloud ecosystem that enables businesses to protect, synchronize, and manage data through a centralized, intuitive, and easy-to-operate platform. From enterprise storage, data backup, file sharing, and collaboration to video surveillance and network infrastructure, Synology’s solutions are designed to simplify IT management and accelerate digital transformation.

Alongside ongoing technology innovation, Synology also focuses strongly on long-term stability, security, and scalability for data infrastructure. More than half of Fortune 500 companies use Synology solutions, reflecting the brand’s credibility and ability to support large-scale data operations worldwide.

Website: https://www.synology.com/en-sg

The new Manila office, scheduled to open in the second half of 2026, will further strengthen State Street’s global operating model and expand its processing capabilities, complementing the firm’s existing operations across the Asia Pacific region.

“The Asia Pacific region is critical to our longterm growth strategy,” said Ann Fogarty, chief operating officer for Investment Services, State Street. “The expansion into Manila is an important step in the continued evolution of our global operating model as we continue to support significant client growth in the region.”

Manila offers access to a young, diverse and highly educated workforce, drawing talent from the city’s wellestablished University Belt and its strong pipeline of graduates with financial services and operations expertise.

With USD54.5 trillion¹ in assets under custody and/or administration, State Street services more than 12% of the world’s assets². The firm operates in more than 100 geographic markets and employs approximately 51,000 people worldwide. State Street established its presence in Asia Pacific more than 40 years ago and today operates 16 offices across the region.

¹ As of March 31, 2026

² Represents State Street AUC/A of USD$54.5T as of March 31, 2026, divided by Global Financial Assets, including Global Equity, Global Debt Securities and Global Broad Money (M3), as of December 31, 2024. Sources: SIFMA Markets Factbook, 2025; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation (OECD), World Bank.
Hashtag: #StateStreetCorporation #Manila #GlobalOperatingModel

https://www.statestreet.com

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About State Street Corporation

State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) is one of the world’s leading providers of financial services to institutional investors including investment servicing, investment management and investment research and trading. With US$54.5 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration and US$5.6 trillion* in assets under management as of March 31, 2026, State Street operates globally in more than 100 geographic markets and employs approximately 51,000 worldwide. For more information, visit State Street’s website at www.statestreet.com.

*Assets under management as of March 31, 2026 includes approximately US$184 billion of assets with respect to SPDR® products for which State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (SSGA FD) acts solely as the marketing agent. SSGA FD and State Street Investment Management are affiliated.

© 2026 State Street Corporation
8937957.1.1.GBL.RTL
Exp. May 31, 2027

The stock rose to ₹5.25 on Wednesday as traders reacted to online chatter around Modi gifting Meloni a packet of Melody toffees during his visit to Rome. The moment spread quickly after Meloni posted a video thanking him for the gift, with the two leaders smiling as the confectionery was shown to the camera. Meloni called it a “very, very good toffee”, feeding a social-media burst around the long-running “Melodi” meme built from the two leaders’ surnames.

The market reaction, however, appeared to rest on a misunderstanding. Melody is made by Parle Products, the privately held consumer goods company behind brands such as Parle-G, Monaco, Hide & Seek and Mango Bite. Parle Industries, the BSE-listed penny stock that rallied, is a separate entity and is not connected to the toffee brand.

Trading volumes reflected the intensity of the speculative move. More than 8 lakh shares changed hands, sharply above the stock’s one-week average of about 2 lakh shares and its one-month average of about 3 lakh shares. The counter’s low price and limited liquidity made it particularly vulnerable to abrupt moves driven by social-media narratives rather than company fundamentals.

Parle Industries was formerly known as Parle Software and was incorporated in 1983. The company changed its name to Parle Industries in 2019 and has been associated with infrastructure, real estate and paper-related activities after earlier links to technology services. Its business profile bears little resemblance to Parle Products, which remains privately owned and is not available for direct stock-market investment.

The episode underlined a recurring weakness in retail trading behaviour, especially in penny and small-cap counters. Brand-name familiarity, partial information and fast-moving online trends can combine to create price action detached from corporate reality. Similar cases have occurred in global markets when investors bought shares of companies with names resembling better-known brands, digital assets or takeover targets.

The Modi-Meloni exchange took place during the Prime Minister’s visit to Italy, where bilateral talks covered political, economic and strategic cooperation. The confectionery moment, however, overshadowed the formal agenda online, with users recirculating earlier “Melodi” memes that gained popularity after previous public appearances by the two leaders.

For Parle Products, the viral clip amounted to unpaid visibility for one of its best-known confectionery labels. Melody has long been associated with the advertising line built around the question of why the toffee is so chocolaty, making the brand instantly recognisable to consumers across the country. The company did not need to be listed for the publicity to become a market event; traders simply found a listed company carrying the Parle name and pushed it to the exchange limit.

Market participants said the movement showed how quickly meme-driven attention can spill into thinly traded stocks. In such counters, even modest buying can produce exaggerated percentage gains because of narrow order books and daily circuit filters. The 5 per cent upper circuit capped the day’s rise, preventing the stock from moving higher during that session.

The rally also raised questions about investor due diligence at a time when retail participation in equity markets remains elevated. Millions of new demat accounts have entered the market over the past few years, with many first-time investors using mobile platforms, social-media tips and short-form videos as part of their trading decisions. While this has widened market access, it has also increased exposure to rumour-led activity.

Held at the Indonesia Safety Driving Center (ISDC) in Serpong on May 18, 2026, the program provided participants with practical instruction in defensive driving, emergency response, professional driving ethics, and Indonesian traffic regulations. The initiative combines classroom learning with hands-on exercises conducted in a controlled training environment at one of Indonesia’s leading driving safety facilities. The program reflects Green SM’s long-term commitment to building a professional driver network while promoting safer mobility experiences and higher service standards for Indonesian communities.

Since its launch in Indonesia in December 2024, Green SM had already implemented regular internal training programs for driver partners, focusing on safe driving practices, real-world situation handling, customer service standards, and traffic law compliance. Through this partnership, Green SM aims to further strengthen and standardize its training initiatives while also contributing to broader road safety awareness across Indonesia.

As of April 2026, Green SM vehicles have traveled more than 109 million kilometers across Indonesia, contributing to the reduction of approximately 20.9 thousand tons of CO2 emisssions, equivalent to the annual carbon absorption capacity of more than 964 thousand trees. As the company continues to expand, Green SM remains focused on supporting driver capability development and service quality initiatives to support safer and more reliable mobility experiences. Safety remains one of Green SM’s core operational priorities, spanning driver training, service standards, and the overall customer journey across every ride.

Korlantas Polri, the national authority responsible for traffic management, law enforcement, and road safety education across Indonesia, is supporting the initiative as part of broader efforts to encourage safer and more disciplined driving practices nationwide.

This program marks an important first step in the collaboration between Green SM and Korlantas Polri. Both parties expect to explore additional initiatives in the future to promote responsible driving practices and contribute positively to Indonesia’s evolving transportation ecosystem.

Mr. Deny Tjia, Managing Director of Green SM Indonesia, shared: “Our driver partners represent Green SM in every journey they complete. Through this program, we aim to strengthen their practical driving skills, road safety awareness, and service professionalism, while continuing to elevate the overall customer experience across Indonesia. At Green SM, safety is not only an operational standard, but also a long-term commitment embedded in how we develop and deliver our services in Indonesia. We are honored to work with Korlantas Polri and hope this collaboration can create meaningful benefits for both our drivers and the wider community.”

Head of the Traffic Corps (Kakorlantas) of the Indonesian National Police, Inspector General Agus Suryonugroho, stated, “The training is part of an effort to promote road safety, security, order, and smooth traffic flow. This collaboration in enhancing driver capabilities is important as part of efforts to improve driver professionalism, as the driver aspect plays a crucial role. We hope this initiative can serve as a benchmark.”

Through this initiative, Green SM and Korlantas Polri aim to promote higher standards of responsibility and professionalism that benefit drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and the broader transportation ecosystem across Indonesia.

Hashtag: #GreenSM

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About GSM & Green SM

GSM (Green and Smart Mobility) is a pioneering company in electric mobility, founded by Phạm Nhật Vượng. The company is building an integrated mobility ecosystem powered by VinFast electric vehicles, intelligent technology, and a professional operating network.

The GSM ecosystem currently consists of four core companies:

• Green SM – GSM’s all-electric ride-hailing brand.
• VinDT – the professional driver training and testing company.
• VinBus – the electric bus operating company.
• Green Future – the company providing electric vehicle rental solutions.

Green SM is GSM’s global all-electric ride-hailing brand, offering high-quality transportation services using a 100% electric fleet of cars and motorbikes. Combining smart technology with a professional driver network, Green SM delivers a mobility experience that is safe, reliable, and environmentally responsible.

Green SM currently operates in Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, and the Philippines, advancing GSM’s mission to provide safe and dependable green journeys for everyone while helping shape a more sustainable future for urban transportation worldwide.