When Piyush Gupta was named chief executive of DBS in 2009, the Singapore lender was going nowhere in particular. He gave it drive and direction, buying assets around Asia and transforming it into the world’s best bank. A series of tech outages put him in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, but Gupta will leave DBS in March with his head held high and his legacy intact. His capable and charismatic successor Tan Su Shan, the first woman to run southeast Asia’s largest bank, has big shoes to fill.

Senior Indonesian officials have floated the idea of transforming the island paradise into a private-wealth hub to rival Hong Kong and Singapore. Jakarta certainly needs to do something to ensure that more of the wealth created onshore stays onshore.

As multinationals navigate the complexities of developing Asian businesses – amid supply-chain reconfigurations, the rise of sustainable financing and the penetration of e-commerce – treasurers are playing a bigger role in strategic decision-making.

The Singapore state-owned fund has unveiled plans to invest $10 billion in India and to plough more capital into the US and Japan. At the same time, it is quietly retreating from China, once its largest investment market, but now beset by underperforming capital markets, weak growth and bleak consumption data.

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.

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.

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.

The commodities firm still needs large banking groups and a range of options when it comes to supporting its operations.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Kevin Lam is to lead the Malaysian bank, becoming the second person within three years to step down as UOB’s TMRW digital head.

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.

A curious disruptive technology group proudly announced an investment by Temasek. The problem: it wasn’t true.

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.

In a highly unusual step, Singapore’s sovereign wealth vehicle has spelled out how and why it bought into the FTX story.

Words fail Euromoney at the mighty event.

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.

There was a touch of edginess in the launch events for two Singapore digital banks, Trust Bank and GSX, on consecutive days this week.

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.

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.

The blockchain-based cross-border payments platform will operate across 15 countries.

The UK bank’s new fund aims to deliver metaverse-themed investment opportunities to wealthy clients in Hong Kong and Singapore.

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.

Is a bank called a trust a bank to trust?

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.

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.

Will the bank’s payouts after a phishing scam set a precedent?