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Singapore was rainforest, fringed by mangrove swamps, with about 150 people when the British acquired it as a colony in 1819. It soon thrived as a trading city because it lay sheltered from storms, right at the bottleneck where ships passed from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean.
In 1965, when it became independent, Singapore had almost 2 million people, crowded slums, negligible natural resources, and an economy dependent on shipping. But Singapore’s one-party government used this sense of crisis to build a wealthy, modern city by using strict controls. They lowered the birth rate, moved nine of ten Singaporeans into new high-rise condominiums, and developed new banking and manufacturing business while expanding shipping even more. By 2015, Singapore had about 5.6 million people and a high standard of living. Its GDP per capita is ranked 3rd in the world, only behind Qatar and Luxembourg. Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth. This excludes property, businesses, and luxury goods, which if included would increase the number of millionaires, especially as property in Singapore is among the world's most expensive.
Fund formation and FinTech: Singapore’s next battles
Singapore’s economy is diversified, with financial services, manufacturing, oil-refining as top contributors. For many years, Singapore was, from a cost and regulatory perspective, the perfect Asian hub for fund startups. However today, the traditional Singapore package of First World operating and living environment at 40% of London costs with a chance to keep a much bigger part of the top-line after tax, is not really the case anymore. Today, all the countries – including Singapore – are subject to the same regulatory and economic pressure, which means that cost of doing business increase and regulatory requirements are high.
This leads to a structural change in the industry as smaller players may obviously not find anymore the benefit of using Singapore for the operations. From a strategic perspective it is clear that the bulk of the global growth will continue to happen in this part of this world, whether it’s from China or Southeast Asia, including India. Larger institutional players will definitely continue considering Singapore as the only and best option in South East Asia.
While in the past, Singapore has strategically supported the fund management and private wealth industries, amongst others, it has now also become very visible which battles the country has chosen next. Singapore has become one of the best places to start a FinTech globally because of the regulatory environment, favorable Government policies and the incentives and infrastructure support available here. The MAS has a dedicated FinTech unit which goes out of its way to woo the regional FinTech companies to start up here and to promote Singapore based FinTech firms. For example, during the Formula One race, the regulator arranged for a roundtable of around 25 CEOs of global banks and presented the top FinTech ideas from Singapore. Another battle is Singapore’s new Variable Capital Companies Law which preps the jurisdiction to compete with Luxembourg, Ireland and offshore jurisdictions such as Cayman Islands.
The Opalesque Singapore Roundtable, sponsored by Eurex and SANNE, took place in November 2016 in Singapore with:
- Noor Quek, NQ International
- Valérie Mantot, SANNE
- Gaurav Bansal, Salmon Global Fund
- Mike Coleman, RMCA
- Peter Fricke, Eurex
- Rajesh Sundaresan, Lighthouse Canton
The group also discussed:
- Why Singapore-based hedge funds have recently outperformed their HK-based peers
- What is the difference between financial hubs and wealth centers?
- How are millennials changing how Asia’s family offices are run?
- What opportunities do fund managers see in ASEAN?
- Why the proximity argument of Shanghai and Hong Kong versus China will be waning over time
- Quality of Life: What happened to Singapore’s trump card relative to Hong Kong?
- When it comes to populism, is Asia on a different trajectory than the rest of the world? What will this mean for investment returns?
- An in-depth update on global commodity trading by Mike Coleman: Why buy-and-hold does not work
- Why gold is a monetary asset, and not a commodity
- Why robo-advisory can be even cheaper than ETFs
- Eurex extends trading hours up to 23 hours. Which alternative assets listed on Eurex returns over 50% p.a.?
- Have we reached the high point of globalization and open markets?
- The world from a Silicon Valley perspective
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