Bank of Singapore Ltd (新加坡銀行), the private banking arm of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC, 華僑銀行), is looking to expand its family office business as the city-state rolls out the red carpet for wealthy investors.
“We are seeing increasing demand for families moving into the next generation to set a proper structure in place to manage family wealth,” chief executive officer Bahren Shaari said in an interview on Thursday. “Singapore is promoting that, to let families use it as a base to manage their investment activities globally.”
Bank of Singapore’s expansion would heighten competition with European firms such as UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG, who have long dominated this space.
Photo: Bloomberg
Singapore family offices had average assets under management of US$857 million last year, nearly double the Asia-Pacific average of US$445 million, according to a survey of 262 such offices in a UBS/Campden report.
The expansion is to be spearheaded by Lee Woon Shiu (李文修), a managing director who currently looks after Bank of Singapore’s wealth planning and trust solutions, Shaari said.
While the bank does not plan to substantially increase the number of relationship managers it employs from about 400 now, it aims to double assets under management to US$500 million per banker over the next three to four years, he told Bloomberg TV on Friday.
Bank of Singapore also plans to open a new Taiwan unit to tap OCBC’s onshore presence.
The expanded family office business in Singapore would especially focus on rich families from China, Europe, and the Middle East, who are looking to invest in the Southeast Asian nation.
The Singapore government provides incentives including tax exemptions for funds managed by family offices for both offshore and onshore vehicles.
That offers the advantage that the offices would not pay Singapore tax on most of its investment gains, Shaari said.
Bank of Singapore’s assets under management rose to US$100 billion last month, after increasing an average 21 percent each year over the past five years.
The bank ranked No. 7 among Asia’s largest private banks in 2016, data compiled by Asian Private Banker showed.
To help expand its wealth and family office business in Europe, Bank of Singapore hired Anthony Adriano Simcic this month from HSBC Private Bank in Luxembourg. Simcic is to remain in the European city, which would be used as a base in addition to London.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS