SEA Weekly

ExpertLinked.in

**SEA Weekly** brings you an audio version of the SEA Weekly newsletter by Chloe Tan and Miguel Santos, analyzing the major events and developments reshaping Southeast Asia's digital economy and industrial landscape each week. Rather than surface-level recaps, these episodes dig into the underlying patterns: the infrastructure being built beneath consumer apps, the supply chains powering regional manufacturing, the regulatory frameworks governments are writing, and the flows of capital and FDI reshaping Southeast Asia. Read the series at https://expertlinked.in/tags/southeast-asia/

  1. 4d ago

    SEA Weekly - Episode 14: The Balance Sheet Is the Story

    May 31, 2026 Indonesia intervened to support the rupiah, Thailand posted a US$7.6 billion current-account deficit for April, and Singapore commodity traders described active rerouting decisions driven by Middle East disruptions — all in the same 48-hour window. Meanwhile, Vietnam expanded its industrial park network to 26 sites, entered the global top 10 for steel production, and secured Gulf energy investment on technology-transfer terms. Emily Chen hosts Miguel Santos and Chloe Tan for a three-voice episode on the week's central insight: growth is the headline, but balance-sheet depth is the story. Who can absorb FX pressure, working-capital stress, and logistics disruption while still compounding capability? That question is now the decisive contest in ASEAN — for manufacturers, fintechs, and investors alike.https://seaweekly.com/posts/2026-05-31-sea-weekly-the-balance-sheet-is-the-story/

    23 min
  2. SEA Weekly - Episode 13: The Cost-of-Carry Premium

    May 24

    SEA Weekly - Episode 13: The Cost-of-Carry Premium

    Southeast Asia's headline growth data still looks strong, but this week's operating evidence points to a tougher regional constraint: who can finance volatility without pausing investment. Thailand's airline fuel squeeze and tariff repricing, Vietnam's export acceleration with foreign-enterprise concentration, and Southeast Asia's highly concentrated Q1 venture funding all indicate the same shift. Emily Chen hosts Miguel Santos and Chloe Tan for a three-voice discussion on the new cost-of-carry premium and why resilience now depends on underwriting quality, energy throughput, governance discipline, and balance-sheet depth. https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-05-24-sea-weekly-the-cost-of-carry-premium/

    14 min
  3. SEA Weekly Episode 12: Capital Without Capture

    May 17

    SEA Weekly Episode 12: Capital Without Capture

    Vietnam's US$18.7 billion FDI surge, Thailand's first licensed virtual bank, and the Philippines' emergency energy intervention all point to the same harder regional problem: Southeast Asia can attract capital faster than it can localize resilience. Emily Chen hosts Miguel Santos and Chloe Tan for a cross-beat conversation on why the next bottleneck is not capital formation but domestic absorption: supplier depth, underwriting edge, energy security, and the ability to keep more of the margin at home once volatility hits. Read the article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-05-17-sea-weekly-capital-without-capture/

    11 min
  4. SEA Weekly Episode 11: The Corridor and the Cap

    May 10

    SEA Weekly Episode 11: The Corridor and the Cap

    Indonesia's 8% ride-hailing commission cap, one week on, has produced a governance picture most coverage missed: Danantara's shareholding in Gojek is confirmed, golden-share language remains active in Grab-GoTo merger talks, and an entity controlling roughly 90% of Indonesia's ride-hailing market is being structured with state veto rights. The same week, Indonesia and the Philippines signed a nickel corridor MoU covering 73.6% of global production — applying the Pertamina model to critical minerals. The 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu produced three policy instruments (DEFA trade architecture, Article 6 carbon framework, ASEAN Finance Sectoral Plan) all following the same design: directed capital flows through policy-governed channels. Miguel Santos and Chloe Tan join host Emily Chen to make the non-obvious read: these are not isolated sector stories — they are structurally isomorphic instruments of the same regional shift. Trust Bank Singapore's March 2026 profitability milestone provides the control group for what the GoTo/Grab fintech pivot would have to achieve, and why the path is harder from a position of regulatory duress.Read the article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-05-10-sea-weekly-the-corridor-and-the-cap/

    30 min
  5. SEA Weekly - Episode 10: The 8% Decree — When the State Becomes Your Platform's Largest Stakeholder

    May 3

    SEA Weekly - Episode 10: The 8% Decree — When the State Becomes Your Platform's Largest Stakeholder

    Indonesia capped ride-hailing commissions at 8% on May Day — a 60% drop in platform revenue per trip — while sovereign wealth fund Danantara simultaneously holds stakes in the companies bearing the shock. The state that sets the price is also a co-owner of the business that has to live with it. Miguel Santos and Chloe Tan join host Emily Chen to unpack why this is industrial policy, not labor policy; what the Pertamina model applied to platforms means for every FDI model in Southeast Asia; and why the 8% decree may paradoxically be the best thing that ever happened to GoPay and OVO. Trust Bank Singapore's first monthly profit — achieved with no state co-ownership — provides the instructive counterpoint.Read the article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-05-03-sea-weekly-the-8-percent-decree/

    25 min
  6. SEA Weekly - Episode 9: Infrastructure Was 'Done'. The BIS Sent a Memo.

    Apr 26

    SEA Weekly - Episode 9: Infrastructure Was 'Done'. The BIS Sent a Memo.

    Bangkok declared the infrastructure era over at Money20/20 Asia. The BIS published a stablecoin warning the day before the conference opened, questioning whether the dollar-denominated rails beneath that infrastructure carry ETF-like run risk. OCBC answered both arguments in the same week: launching Southeast Asia's first on-chain tokenised gold fund on Ethereum and Solana, and emerging as preferred bidder for HSBC's Indonesian retail banking assets at S$444 million. Vietnam and South Korea launched cross-border QR connectivity on bilateral sovereign infrastructure that runs no stablecoin exposure. The synthesis: "Sovereign Intelligence" is the right idea — but it needs to be applied to the settlement layer, not just to regulatory oversight tooling. Read the full article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-04-26-sea-weekly-infrastructure-was-done-the-bis-sent-a-memo/

    24 min
  7. SEA Weekly #08: When Energy Gets Expensive, Payment Friction Gets Political

    Apr 19

    SEA Weekly #08: When Energy Gets Expensive, Payment Friction Gets Political

    Crude oil crossed a hundred dollars a barrel, the IMF cut growth forecasts for Asia's emerging economies, and Southeast Asia's governments reached for subsidy levers. The real story wasn't in the macro headlines — it was in the payment infrastructure layer quietly assembling beneath them. AMRO made the case for local-currency settlement connectivity, Thunes and Circle extended stablecoin settlement to 140 countries, and Ebanx expanded corridor by corridor on its own balance sheet. The energy shock isn't delaying payments modernization. It's selecting for the versions that reduce economic drag fastest — and turning payment friction from a product metric into a policy problem. Read the article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-04-19-sea-weekly-when-energy-gets-expensive-payment-friction-gets-political/

    19 min
  8. SEA Weekly: The AI Agent Arrives at the Checkout

    Apr 12

    SEA Weekly: The AI Agent Arrives at the Checkout

    Mastercard just launched authenticated AI-agent payments in Singapore and Malaysia. Vietnam's MoMo — 30 million users, profitable, five years old since its last big raise — is seeking investors at roughly the same valuation. These facts belong in the same sentence. Follow me for weekly update on Southeast AsiaReach Chloe's article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-04-12-sea-weekly-the-ai-agent-arrives-at-the-checkout/

    19 min
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About

**SEA Weekly** brings you an audio version of the SEA Weekly newsletter by Chloe Tan and Miguel Santos, analyzing the major events and developments reshaping Southeast Asia's digital economy and industrial landscape each week. Rather than surface-level recaps, these episodes dig into the underlying patterns: the infrastructure being built beneath consumer apps, the supply chains powering regional manufacturing, the regulatory frameworks governments are writing, and the flows of capital and FDI reshaping Southeast Asia. Read the series at https://expertlinked.in/tags/southeast-asia/

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  • Creator
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  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
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    SEA Weekly