Financials: Shinhan Financial, Uni-Asia Group, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Tokyo Stock Exchange Tokyo Price Index Topix and more

• We can consider three types of dividend stocks, targeting the March 31 dividend base date: 1. 1Q fiscal year-ending dividends, 2. Interim (quarterly) dividends, 3. REITs regular dividends
• The ex-dividend price corrections of fiscal year-ending dividend stocks have been pretty tight recently. In addition, the futures basis has not reached a desirable level either.
• So, either outright dividend trading or dividend arb play does not have much trade opening. So, I’d consider setting up a long/short basket trading, by focusing on high DTV ones.

For our next Corporate Webinar, we are glad to welcome Uni-Asia Group (UAG SP) Group CFO Lim Kai Ching.

In the upcoming Webinar, Kai Ching will share a short company presentation, after which he will engage in a fireside chat with Smartkarma Insight Provider Osbert Tang. The Corporate Webinar will include a live Q&A session.

The Corporate Webinar will be hosted on Tuesday, 22 March 2022, 17:00 SGT.

Uni-Asia Group Limited is an alternative investment company, which offers structured financing, ship charter arrangement, shipping and maritime asset management, and real estate investments. The Group has 10 wholly-owned bulk carriers under the Group’s ship-owning and chartering segment, and another eight bulk carriers through joint-investment companies.

Uni-Asia also invests in property projects in Hong Kong, of which two projects have been completed and are currently in the market for strata-title sales. The Group is also invested in three other property projects in Hong Kong, which are currently under construction. Within Japan, the Group has been investing and developing small residential property projects termed the “ALERO” series for the past 10 years and continues to see great success with these projects.

Corporate Webinars by Smartkarma Corporate Solutions feature discussions with IROs and Executives, discussing their companies, the challenges they face, and the opportunities in their sectors and markets.

• Amongst numerous cases of mis-selling of ICICI Prudential Life ULIP policies we highlight 2 cases of N Yadav and Ramvati Yadav in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh by ICICI Bank staff 
• Fraudulent documentation by ICICI Bank staff which could have been easily exposed has instead been approved by ICICI Prudential Life’s underwriting
• Although highlighted only 2 cases there may be many more hidden cases which should be a major concern for investors in  ICICI Prudential Life on the abysmal state of underwriting.

• This article asks the question, “Do companies with high corporate governance ratings have high stock returns?” I would like to discuss by using the Metrical Score to evaluate corporate governance.
• Companies with higher Metrical Scores tend to have increased market capitalization from December 2020 to February 2022, showing significant positive correlation between Metrical Scores and change in equity market capitalizations.
• Metrical has been monitoring the stock returns of top 20 Metrical Score companies since 2015. The top 20 composites have outperformed both TOPIX and JPX400 indexes on a cumulative basis.