Financial Mindset

One in three Singaporean business owners still use their personal bank accounts for their company banking needs, trying to escape high transaction fees, according to a survey from MariBank, a digital bank owned by Southeast Asian tech firm Sea . That creates tax and legal headaches , as business owners find it difficult to deduce their legitimate profit and deductions come tax season.  “Our local banks are good, and international banks also have a strong presence here,” Natalia Goh, MariBank’s CEO, told Fortune . “But there are certain banking needs that are still underserved.” MariBank’s answer is a business account with zero transaction fees and a single app that lets customers toggle between personal and business banking. “These needs are the white spaces that nobody’s really addressing,” Goh explains. “That’s what makes it exciting, and that’s where I think we have room to play.” The origins of MariBank MariBank launched in 2023 as a wholly-owned subsidia...

Jeff Bezos won’t pretend he didn’t see this day coming. Sure, when he was sitting in his Bellevue, Wash., garage in 1995 , at a makeshift desk made from a wooden door slab, he probably wasn’t imagining that his nascent online bookshop would grow into the largest company in the world. Instead, he may have been puzzling over how to set up extension cords to keep his computers and servers running without tripping his home’s circuit breakers. Or he may have been mulling over changing the name of his tiny startup, then called Cadabra, to Amazon . But three decades later, now that his startup has become an “everything company” that reportedly delivers as many packages as the U.S. Postal Service; now that the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business powers a third of the internet; and now that Amazon has topped the Fortune 500 and ascended to the No. 1 spot in the Global 500 —making it the biggest company in the world—Bezos admitted to Fortune : “It’s not like it’s a complete surprise.”...

President  Donald Trump  said late Saturday that he would halt new planned attacks on Iran pending renewed talks to  wind down the war  and revive stalled cargo traffic through the  Strait of Hormuz . It was the latest in a pattern of announcements the U.S. president has made to first threaten massive strikes and then later call them off. The abrupt shifts have been a defining feature of the five-month conflict that has  sent prices of oil and basic goods soaring  — and the announcements to date have been upended by renewed attacks days or even hours afterward. Here is a look at some of Trump’s past major announcements about pausing strikes against Iran: April 7 The United States and Iran  agree to a two-week ceasefire  to end the intense fighting that began on Feb. 28  with Israeli and U.S. attacks . Trump makes the announcement less than two hours before a  deadline he had set  for Tehran to capitulate or fac...

UK employers are creating jobs for experienced staff with artificial intelligence skills and cutting back elsewhere, according to new figures that show how the technology is starting to create a two-track labor market.  British firms posted about 10% fewer vacancies this month than in January 2025, data from job search website Indeed shared with Bloomberg shows. However, the fall disguised wide disparities as firms increasingly adopt AI to cut costs and boost productivity.  Software developers, whose profession has been transformed by AI and suffered dramatic job losses since 2022, are back in demand with postings rising 14%. Much of the increase came from senior roles and those directly linked to AI.  Meanwhile, occupations such as IT and engineering, where AI enhances the value of experience by taking over routine tasks, are among the few that have held up since last summer.  Elsewhere, from retail and manufacturing to white-collar roles that are m...

President Donald Trump in a Saturday evening social media post claimed that Mideast allies have reached the parameters of a deal to end the Iran war and said that he would hold off on ordering new strikes in the five-month old conflict for now. Trump added that the emerging deal “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.” “Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,” Trump said. He added that Israel has agreed to join the U.S. in the commitment to try to complete the agreement with Iran that would bring about an end to the war. Earlier, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, in a phone call with Trump raised concerns about the U.S. potentially escalating the  conflict with Iran , according to a person fam...

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and the surge in baby boomer retirements could soon redefine what it means to have a healthy labor market. Americans have long been conditioned to expect that robust gains in the Labor Department’s monthly payroll report will result in lower unemployment. When hiring is weak or negative, the labor market can’t absorb enough new workers, sending the jobless rate up. For years, monthly job gains of around 125,000 to 150,000 were considered necessary to offset entrants into the workforce. But when the labor pool is shrinking, the math looks different. In fact, a  report from Dallas Fed economists  earlier this year found that the breakeven rate of employment growth, or the number of net new jobs needed each month to keep the unemployment rate steady, actually went slightly negative during the summer and fall of 2025. That means payrolls can be stagnant or shrink, and the unemployment rate will hol...

Michigan on Saturday joined Minnesota in reporting cyberattacks on nine of the state’s water systems but an official said all systems were operating “safely.” Earlier this week, authorities said cyberattacks targeted over 30 water systems in Minnesota. The source of the attacks is being investigated, but they came amid warnings that Iranian hackers have been focused on such systems. The reports in Michigan surfaced after the state received a federal cyber alert Tuesday about attempts to tamper with operational technology at water systems. Soon after, the state received “a small number of reports from Michigan communities indicating activity consistent with what federal agencies described,” said Dale George, the director of communications at the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. He later said nine systems were impacted. “All systems continued to operate safely, issues were addressed by local operators, and there are no known impacts ...