September 2009
Singaporean private banking: Formula for excess
Singapore’s free-wheeling private bankers enjoyed the ride of their lives in the pre-crisis years, but with government intervention and a clutch of lawsuits looming, it looks as though many are finally running out of road. Eric Ellis reports.
DESPITE ITS GLITZY new image as the latest hotspot to host a night-time Formula One race around glamorous casinos, Singapore – the tropical island republic dubbed southeast Asia’s Monaco by private bankers – hides a post-global financial crisis secret.
It’s a touchy subject at private banking heavyweight UBS, which at the market’s pre-meltdown peak ran 1,000 client relationship managers hawking all manner of exotic investments to regional tycoons in a heady atmosphere one former operative described as a "zoo" and a "boiler room". Perhaps that’s because UBS is still smarting from the loss of its ‘$30 billion man’, the former head of wealth management Tee Fong Seng, who walked – with some clients and team members – in June to Credit Suisse to join his former UBS Singapore colleague Marcel Kreis. Or maybe UBS is still embarrassed by the industry sniggers at its flamboyant executive director James Tulley,...
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