Insights

If you are planning on doing business in Singapore, this guide provides an overview of Singapore's investment environment. Learn more about common issues companies might face when expanding into Singapore and get insights on navigating the country's legal, accounting and tax landscape.

Tomorrow, we can expect new technologies enabling the internet of things to create opportunities for future fast-growth companies. Some will become industry leaders – the Xiaomis and Ubers of tomorrow. Many more will fail – either because their offering wasn’t differentiated enough, or because their management made the wrong decisions.

Scaling a tech business is like walking a burning tightrope. The faster you go, the more you risk falling off. But go too slowly and the rope will burn through.

On-going access to finance is a key issue for high-growth businesses. Those that lack financial firepower may find their growth constrained. Others may encounter problems with cash flow during day to day operations. At the same time the funding landscape has changed drastically since the financial crisis of 2008 – and continues to evolve.

For tech companies, the regulatory environment is tougher now than ever before. To protect national interests, governments are using compliance to restrict companies that could potentially disrupt established industries which can creating a knock on effect for tech companies. Rapidly expanding companies also face a wider range of individual regulations as they expand into new territories, be it employment law, taxation, product safety or licensing.

As global attitudes towards tax change, tech companies need to future-proof their tax practices to stand up to enhanced scrutiny. The way in which companies markets and sells its services can also have tax implications. Therefore, one thing is clear – tax matters, and ambitious tech companies need to develop a tax strategy that can keep pace with their growth aspirations.

Companies are increasingly focused on high-quality strategic transactions, with less time spent on investigating peripheral opportunities, according to our annual tracker of business leader M&A intentions.

Business-minded technologists have always planned for global business empires. It used to take decades before they could grow globally. Today, it can be more or less instantaneous – creating a new set of opportunities and threats.