The messy demise of an investment platform

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Hello readers,

Happy New Year, friends! This is the first time I’m this excited for a brand new year. We get a fresh start, new goals, and (hopefully) less time spent on Zoom/Google Meet.

This week, most of the Tech in Asia crew is on break except for the newsroom who continues to put out incredible articles for us. So even though we wanted to start the year off with positive stories, today’s news about the messy demise of an investment platform is too important not to share.

Today we look at,

• How investment platform CoAssets lost millions of dollars from retail investors and shut down
• The highs and lows of Southeast Asia’s tech and startup scene in 2020
• Other newsy highlights such as the fall in Jack Ma’s net worth and Tesla entering India

Have a great day! I hope you guys will smash your resolutions in 2021.

PREMIUM SUMMARY

Money back not guaranteed

While most of us are celebrating the new year, others were shaken to the core after having lost their life savings. In December, Singapore-based investment platform CoAssets shut down. Several hundred retail investors had lent their money to the firm. Now, police reports have been filed against the company, alleging suspicious transactions. Here’s a quick lowdown.

• US$30 million in debt: CoAssets had disposed of over US$30 million in borrowings to Sunfits, a virtually unknown debt recovery firm. Sunfits stated to investors that it couldn’t recover the debt and that there was no “visibility” on redeeming any of the assets.
• Background: CoAssets was a peer-to-peer lending platform founded by Getty Goh and Huan Kiat Seh in 2013. The company stands out for its high profile hire: It brought on Lawrence Lim, the former chief artillery officer of the Singapore Armed Forces, as its chief operating officer.
• All the things that went wrong: Lim, however, left after objecting to the company’s practices. He blamed the ex-group CEO Goh for the latter’s mismanagement. DWG, one of Singapore’s largest real estate brokerage firms, wanted to merge with CoAssets in 2018 but discovered “irregularities, misinformation, and suspicious transactions” when it looked into the firm.

Full story: Millions lost, police reports filed: Behind the plight of CoAssets’ hapless investors

PREMIUM SUMMARY

The baller Southeast Asian startups