Malaysia

This is the third year of the drama: as the government desperately tries to untangle its controversial fund before elections are called, Malaysians are asking who’s really paying to clean up the mess.

The Sultan of Johor stresses he needs to earn a living just like his fellow countrymen. His investments, often alongside those of billionaire Vincent Tan, span telecoms, supermarket chains and property. But will the ambitious developments he’s backed in his home state prove a royal flush or a real estate bust?

Affin Hwang

Credit Suisse reckons Malaysian wealth is generally ’under-appreciated’ by its peers, though the bank clearly believes it is the exception to that apparent maxim.

Kanags Surendran, CIMB’s head of digital banking and self-described ‘passionate fintech geek’, likes to point out that more than 90% of CIMB customers’ transactions are now done via the bank’s digital and self-service channels. CIMB’s digital users grew by 25% in the last year, and mobile users grew by 45%.

Mukhtar Hussain’s HSBC Malaysia could well qualify for a corporate social responsibility award — with the emphasis on responsibility — because of its prudence in avoiding having anything to do with 1MDB. The toxic state development fund has so poisoned the Malaysian market, as Asiamoney explains elsewhere in this edition.

Public Bank has SME banking in its corporate DNA, a culture stemming from its roots servicing many of the country’s ethnic Chinese shopkeepers and stallholders. So, it is unsurprising that SME lending by Public Bank grew by a healthy 11.4% to RM71 billion in 2016, its 50th anniversary year, much as it has done for many of those previous 49. That represents 24.3% of the bank’s total lending portfolio.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the Wee family’s Singapore-based United Overseas Bank should feel suitably complimented. Singaporean banks like UOB are the regional industry standard that big Malaysian banks, such as Maybank, say they benchmark against for product range, service and prudential management.