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LATEST ARTICLES
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UOB’s acquisition of Citi’s consumer assets in four southeast Asia markets strengthens its status in one of the world’s fastest growing regions. The Singapore lender’s CEO Wee Ee Cheong talks to Euromoney about why this matters and what comes next.
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The Singapore lender is looking to India in search of new business and growth opportunities, its chief executive Piyush Gupta tells Euromoney. Long term, it aims to emulate onshore the country’s best private-sector lenders, HDFC and Kotak Mahindra.
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It has become fashionable to describe private credit as an opaque and fast inflating bubble that could bring crisis to the global financial system. But in Asia even banks and regulators hope it will grow to bridge the yawning financing gap.
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The commodities firm still needs large banking groups and a range of options when it comes to supporting its operations.
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While the air at the Singapore Fintech Festival was full of grand ideas about GenAI, real innovation was taking place in the weeds of fintech development.
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Singapore’s DBS Bank has spent the past decade transforming itself into one of the world’s best digital banks. But a series of lengthy service outages over the past year has wrongfooted senior management, who have been left to issue apologies and pledge to do better.
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Singapore’s big-three lenders – UOB, DBS and OCBC – have won Euromoney awards for best SME bank in Asia each year since 2016, two of them taking the global award as well. Why?
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Thirty percent of Singapore sovereign fund’s portfolio is in private equity or real estate. Surely this is as good as it gets for private markets.
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Temasek, as an equity-only sovereign wealth vehicle, had a bad year. A close look at its portfolio positioning helps us understand what it is doing about it.
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Kevin Lam is to lead the Malaysian bank, becoming the second person within three years to step down as UOB’s TMRW digital head.
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If Olam Agri’s planned dual-listing IPO goes ahead in June it will have a bit of everything: a Singapore-Saudi listing, geopolitics and sovereign funds jostling to defend their nations against strain in global food security.
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A curious disruptive technology group proudly announced an investment by Temasek. The problem: it wasn’t true.
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While big US banks edge slowly towards exchange-like trading of loans, a group of market veterans have tested a system in Asia and will soon launch in Europe.
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In a highly unusual step, Singapore’s sovereign wealth vehicle has spelled out how and why it bought into the FTX story.
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Words fail Euromoney at the mighty event.
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The Singaporean bank has launched sector-specific decarbonization commitments it says are industry-leading. For them to be achieved, the bank’s corporate client base is going to need to make changes, too.
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There was a touch of edginess in the launch events for two Singapore digital banks, Trust Bank and GSX, on consecutive days this week.
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The launch of new digital banks backed by Standard Chartered, FairPrice, Grab and Singtel comes at an interesting time. Both emerge into a very different world than the one in which they applied for licences. Success will rest upon exploiting the ecosystems of their founders.
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At first glance, Temasek’s long-standing ardour for China seems to be fading. Its mainland holdings have had a shocker of a year, but the Singapore fund is buying.
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The blockchain-based cross-border payments platform will operate across 15 countries.
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The UK bank’s new fund aims to deliver metaverse-themed investment opportunities to wealthy clients in Hong Kong and Singapore.
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A Singapore-based investment vehicle fronted by former Commonwealth Bank of Australia CFO Rob Jesudason aims to invest in financial disruptors that will complement the industry without reinventing it.
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The censure from the Monetary Authority of Singapore will sting far more than any capital impact for a bank that prides itself on being a peerless digital innovator.
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Of all the 13 consumer businesses on the block in Citi’s Asia revamp, Taiwan was the most prized. DBS’s successful bid bolsters an already profitable business – and doing so required some hard thinking about geopolitics by the Singapore bank’s board.
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Will the bank’s payouts after a phishing scam set a precedent?
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Analysts are keeping a close eye on regional as well as US monetary policy as they attempt to plot a course for the currencies of the countries that form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
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Piyush Gupta thinks the worst is behind us and now is the time for the bank to start looking at China.
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The digital pioneer’s consumer website and mobile app have been hit by a series of problems.
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Earlier this year HSBC chief executive Noel Quinn pledged $6 billion of investment in Asia – half of it outside Greater China. Having recognized he can do so much more in southeast Asia and India, how will he achieve this?
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The dining privileges at Bloomberg's New Economy Forum divide an irritated nation
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A new study shows a high level of restlessness among high net-worth clients: they are tired of being immobile and are considering moving their families
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A new blockchain-based payments platform is backed by JPMorgan, DBS and Temasek. It is the source of some pride to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as the new business is the result of a long-term financial experiment.
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Last week, four global banks unveiled cross-border wealth management services under the banner of Wealth Connect, but with the crisis at Evergrande unresolved and growth slipping, the scheme comes at a tricky moment.
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Singapore’s DBS has unleashed an unlikely new weapon against impersonation scams: a strange blue-haired man called Kim Huat.
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Deal strengthens SGX in the FX OTC market, bringing it closer to being the full-service operator Boon Chye Loh wants it to be.
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Court documents relating to fraud charges against a young and flamboyant Singapore trader show that most of the country’s banks have had a relationship with him.
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Temasek’s unusual positioning among sovereign wealth vehicles allowed it to get full exposure to the equity upswing. The results also tell us interesting things about developed versus emerging markets, deal making in a travel-free pandemic and making the best of a crisis.
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As provider to the London Stock Exchange and DBS on digital new issue platforms, Nivaura is laying the foundations for the future of DCM.
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When Stephen Williams joined HSBC more than 20 years ago, the bank was a backmarker in Asian debt markets. When he retires next month, he leaves it top of the heap.
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The two banks plus Singapore’s stock exchange and sovereign wealth vehicle believe they have the collective strength and skills to build Climate Impact X, based initially on southeast Asian forestry and mangrove projects.
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The US bank’s decision to hire 2,300 new staff across its Asia wealth franchise, including 1,000 in Hong Kong alone, underlines the strength of the region and CEO Jane Fraser’s clear push in private banking.
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DBS’s deal to buy 13% of a young and privately owned bank in Shenzhen highlights not only China’s vast growth opportunities post-Covid but also the potential of the cross-border Greater Bay Area.
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Anthony Tan’s 60% control of the Singaporean fintech’s voting power shows what founders can get away with when spared the rigour of an IPO.
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Outwardly different, Singapore and Dubai have transformed themselves into international wealth management hubs, overseen by clear-minded regulators. They are now starting to compete for business with Europe’s far older private wealth centres.
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Singapore always knew its fintech superstar might ditch the city state’s exchange in favour of US markets. Now it looks like Grab will do so through a Spac – the biggest yet – as Asia joins the Pipe party.
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Clubhouse, the San Francisco-based app, is the cool new thing, a unicorn valued at more than $1 billion. On Friday in Singapore, a group of DBS analysts and economists got together on the audio-only platform to discuss the future of electric vehicles. The debate was chatty and inclusive, and a sign of things to come.
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A new study finds that Temasek and GIC were in almost two thirds of sovereign wealth deals in the year to September 2020.
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The full-year results of DBS, OCBC and UOB marked the first time in a year the Singaporean banks had attempted to give any kind of media briefing face-to-face.
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OCBC, UOB and DBS are among the first lenders in Asia to report 2020 numbers. They’re in surprisingly good shape.
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HSBC has been talking about pivoting to Asia for decades. Now, it doesn’t just mean Hong Kong and its immediate surroundings. It is about time.
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The bank’s full-year results for 2020 suggest bad-loan generation is manageable and that brighter times lay ahead – but we still do not know the whole story about borrowers under moratoria.
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A fintech built by a team of former Deutsche bankers in Singapore has became the first recipient of investment and partnership from Marketnode, a new venture between Singapore Exchange and Temasek.
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We’ve tokenized currencies, dentistry, even pandas (no, really). What next? Whisky. We all need a drink.
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More Asian entrepreneurs are going to New York to raise money for Spac listings. Should Singapore’s SGX seek to intercept these listings?
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Wong’s departure from HSBC, where she was head of Greater China, in August 2019 raised the questions of where could she be going and why. The answer is that she will succeed Samuel Tsien as OCBC’s chief executive. What does it mean for the bank?
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DBS has suffered, but its model looks well placed in this environment.
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China has done very well out of Singapore’s new digital banking regime, with Ant and Tencent both represented. Grab and Singtel fly the local flag.
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A new Swiss-Singaporean enterprise styles itself as the world’s first digital asset bank. It is regulated, resembles the structure of a mainstream bank and has some high-visibility advisers and investors, among them Peter Wuffli. Will it work?
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Real estate investment trusts are the mainstay of Singapore listings, a rare example of liquidity and foreign interest in an otherwise dull local bourse. Two contrasting mergers tell intriguing stories about where the Reit market goes from here.
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder as rare deal attracts blue-chip names
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OCBC’s Virtual SME Campus has an expensive public face.
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Bank of Singapore reports positive first year of operations for Luxembourg subsidiary.
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Singapore’s state-owned investment company entered the pandemic in good shape. Covid-19 brought new challenges in which it has emerged as a double-barreled weapon against uncertainty. The fund’s chief investment strategist explains what makes Singapore’s intriguing sovereign wealth vehicle tick.
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Australians may draw a different meaning from MAS’s terminology.
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Joseph Poon is group head of DBS Private Bank, one of Asia’s leading wealth managers. But the event that drives him today, informing his values and his views on investing and risk management, was stepping aboard a rickety raft in 1976 to flee an impoverished and divided Vietnam.
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As expected, DBS and UOB reported dramatic year-on-year declines in profitability, but both were protected by their range.
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The sovereign wealth fund is withdrawing to cash, has seen a once-in-a-generation drawdown and is positioning defensively.
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The Singaporean investment company made a loss – but an impressive one in the circumstances.
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Piyush Gupta, head of Singapore’s DBS Bank, tells Euromoney that scrapping dividends now is a mistake, discusses the mental stress of working from home, and says a multi-year recovery will hit banks hard and lead to mergers and job losses.
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Relief for corporates reeling from the coronavirus will be the bank’s top focus for some time, says its global head of transaction banking.
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In June, Singapore’s regulator will hand licences to three new wholesale digital banks in a bid to better serve under-banked SMEs. Euromoney talks to Arival Bank, a fintech firm aiming to snag a licence and use it to fuel its global ambitions.
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Retail banking has been disrupted. Now comes wholesale’s moment, as banks shift into a higher gear to meet the increasingly onerous demands of digitally connected corporates. Only the best and most adaptable firms are likely to survive.
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HSBC launched its green deposit account in the first week of February with a deposit from a building materials company.
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DBS evacuated 300 employees from Tower 3 of Singapore’s Marina Bay Finance Centre, after an employee tested positive for coronavirus. It comes as banks across the region re-examine worst-case scenarios as the pathogen spreads.
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Across Asia, the coronavirus is hampering banks’ ability to run roadshows, and even hold meetings, and some business continuity plans are starting to kick in.
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FX market participants are responding to Singapore’s desire for physical location of matching and pricing engines in the city-state.
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Despite tough conditions at home and globally, DBS keeps delivering.
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The bank's group head, global transaction banking says: 'We want to open up the transaction banking landscape.'
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When renewables private equity group Equis Energy was sold to GIP for $5 billion – $3.7 billion of it equity – investors walked away with well over double their initial investment. The founders of Equis made around $800 million. But why was more than $500 million of the proceeds ringfenced into a vehicle called Equis Renewables, in which the underlying investors did not participate, while the general partners got it all? The story of how those assets got there casts a light on the curious inner workings of modern private equity.
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The race is on: not Formula 1 but environmental challenges.
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Singapore’s emergence as a global financial hub is no accident, and has not happened overnight. The key, according to Ravi Menon – the managing director of financial regulator the Monetary Authority of Singapore – is to plan well, act decisively and, above all, listen.
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Singapore has everything a market hub needs, but has not built on its regulatory environment.
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UOB is run by three generations of the Wee family, with a fourth in the wings. It is conservative, cautious and stable. But a bold new digital strategy seeks five million customers across the region. Is it coincidence that change is coming just as the bank’s elder statesman retires at 90?
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Divestments at the Singaporean sovereign wealth vehicle tell a story of a tough investment environment.
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Should an institution with all that scale and ability be delivering more than this? The problem with long-term numbers is they still reflect issues from 20 years ago.
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OUE real-estate investment trust (Reit) merger follows Viva-ESR; hope is to create better liquidity in stocks.
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In a rare interview, chief executive Lim Chow Kiat explains the investment discipline that underpins one of the world’s most influential and sophisticated funds – and his fears over the impact of a polarized political world on global investment.
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As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our May Asia focus.