Financial Results
Outgoing BoS Chief Executive Says He Is Going Out On A High After Year Of Contrasts - Report
Bank of Singapore, part of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, is set to report double-digit growth this year, as high as 15 per cent, its outgoing chief executive is reported as saying.
Bank of Singapore, part of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, is set to report double-digit growth this year, as high as 15 per cent, its outgoing chief executive is reported as saying.
The CEO, who is known more usually as “Bing”, is quoted by the Business Times (of Singapore) as saying “this year we’ll have record growth”. "We could end 2014 with AuM (assets under management) of $52-53 billion," he said.
Such a gain would be up of 13-15 per cent from 2013's $46 billion AuM figure. "I'm leaving on a high note - ticked all the right boxes," Renato de Guzman said.
As reported by this publication and others, de Guzman retires at the end of January next year and will be replaced by Bahren Shaari. Shaari, who has more than 25 years of banking experience, was part of the management team at IAPB that moved over to Bank of Singapore in January 2010. Prior to that, he was managing director of UBS Wealth Management, where he headed the South East Asia and Australia marketing team.
The developments represent quite a change for Bank of Singapore. Five years ago, it was the private bank in Asia of ING. It was bought in late 2009 by OCBC because ING was required to spin off non-Dutch asset as a condition of receiving state bailout funds under European Union rules.
BoS has not had everything its way. WealthBriefingAsia exclusively reported in February this year on the departure of Yelandur Nagendra, who was at the time alternate chief executive, Hong Kong branch and global marketing head, India Sub-Continent. A number of NRI-related team members left with him, or shortly afterwards.
"At the beginning of 2014, I was expecting a relatively peaceful pre-retirement but it turned out to be a challenging time as a key member of my team left," de Guzman said in the BT report. But the episode testified to the resilience of the leadership team, with senior managers chipping in to help, according to him.