Daniel Koh is a RECATOOLS editorial persona focused on fintech, digital payments, banking technology, market infrastructure, and digital-economy regulation. Articles under this byline explain how financial technology and policy changes affect consumers, businesses, and regional markets.

About this byline

Daniel Koh is a RECATOOLS editorial persona for finance and digital-economy analysis. Articles are produced and reviewed under RECATOOLS editorial supervision.

Editorial responsibility for this byline rests with Jeffrey Tan (Tan Seng Fei), RECASYS, Singapore. Our Editorial Policy sets out how sources are reviewed, how AI-assisted workflows are used, and how editorial desks and personas are defined.

79
Articles
Finance
Primary beat
May 2026
Writing since
~592 min
Total reading
All 79 Finance 61 Business 11 ASEAN Tech 4 Sustainability 3

Articles · Finance Showing 11–20 of 61

A South Korean city at night with apartment towers and an elevated expressway, illustrating a report on record shareholder returns from Samsung and SK Hynix.
Finance

Samsung And SK Hynix Are Handing Back More Than They Are Building With

Samsung expects shareholder returns of 90 to 110 trillion won this year, the largest ever by a Korean company. SK Hynix is cancelling 40 trillion won of its own shares. Both are running the same AI memory boom, and both have decided the cash outruns the capex.

22 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
A printed bar chart in shades of blue lying on a desk, illustrating a report on the concentration of Southeast Asian AI startup funding.
Finance

Southeast Asia's Record AI Year Funded Fewer Companies Than 2024

US$4.1bn sounds like a boom until you count the deals: 23 rounds this year against 41 last year and 35 before that. One Series D is about 68 per cent of the money, and it is the second regional dataset this year with that exact shape.

20 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
Glass office towers photographed from below against fog, illustrating a report on Nvidia's AI compute financing platforms.
Finance

Nvidia Arranges US$500 Billion of Third-Party Financing for Its Own Hardware

Six of the largest asset managers and investment banks will raise capital for AI infrastructure built on Nvidia hardware. None of it sits on Nvidia's balance sheet, and the agreements are memoranda rather than facilities.

17 Aug 2026 · 9 min read
A printed financial statement on a desk, illustrating a report on hyperscaler lease obligations that sit in the notes rather than the balance sheet.
Finance

Big Tech Has Signed US$725 Billion of Leases That Are Not on the Balance Sheet

Five hyperscalers have disclosed about US$1.2 trillion of lease obligations, of which US$725 billion has not yet commenced and therefore sits in the notes rather than the balance sheet. Goldman expects roughly 35 per cent of 2027 AI capex to be debt-funded.

16 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
A modern glass office building, illustrating a report on reported private equity takeover talks for the software company Workday.
Finance

Workday Jumped a Fifth on a Report, Which Says Something About Its Price

Reuters reported Silver Lake has been in talks for months to take Workday private. The shares rose 19.9 per cent and were halted for volatility, adding US$8.6 billion. No deal, no price, no comment from either party.

16 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A pocket calculator and a pen resting on printed financial statements marked with pink, orange and yellow highlighter, with paper clips scattered beside them and a handwritten note circled on the page.
Finance

What Our Payslip Tool Will Not Tell You

Our payslip decoder describes 39 lines across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and declines to give you a figure in 6 of them. Three of those refusals are overtime, in all three countries, for one reason: the rates move and nothing here could keep them current.

15 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A laptop screen showing a line chart and a pie chart, illustrating a report on Anthropic quarterly revenue and profit disclosure.
Finance

Anthropic Gave Its Revenue a Number. Its Profit Got an Adjective.

Preliminary second-quarter revenue of more than US$11.5 billion, a fourteen-fold rise, and the first quarter of positive adjusted operating income. Revenue got a figure; profit got a direction. The US$559 million everyone is quoting is the May projection, not the result.

15 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
A person working through printed paperwork with a red desk calculator.
Finance

What Actually Happens to Your Bonus

The tax on an extra $1,200 is identical whether it arrives as salary or as a bonus — we computed it at five salary levels through the same engine our own calculators use, and it never differed once. What does differ, above $8,000 a month, is CPF: a raise escapes it entirely while a bonus still attracts it, worth 20 percentage points of cash in hand on the same money.

11 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A phone held against a card terminal to pay, seen over the shoulder of the cashier — illustrative of the tap-to-pay method the new balance uses.
Finance

Google Will Hold Your Child's Money. It Is Not a Bank Account.

A stored balance for under-18s, controlled through Family Link, with real-time visibility of every transaction. What it removes is friction, and also the furniture that comes with a deposit.

11 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
A hand holding a phone showing a stock chart against a wall of market data — illustrating a valuation set without a public market.
Finance

OpenAI Bought $7bn of Its Own Shares at a Valuation That Has Not Moved

OpenAI bought back $7 billion of employee stock using its own balance sheet, at the same $852 billion valuation as March. A buyback is not a price discovery event.

11 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
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