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Don’t capitalise on Hong Kong extradition bill crisis to woo clients, Singapore tells banks
- The city state’s central bank told wealth managers not to design campaigns specifically targeting business from Hong Kong
- The unrest has also encouraged some wealth managers to choose to set up in Singapore
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Singapore has cautioned wealth managers against aggressively marketing their services or making other efforts to woo clients to the city state by capitalising on rival Hong Kong’s political turmoil, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Officials from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) made the request last month to wealth managers, including DBS and a unit of Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation, the people said, declining to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
The central bank told bankers it wanted to ensure wealth managers in Singapore were sensitive to the situation in Hong Kong and did not design campaigns specifically targeting business from the city, the people said.
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The move comes as Hong Kong has been thrown into turmoil by a proposed extradition bill – declared dead this week by Chief Executive Carrie Lam – that for the first time would have allowed China to seek extraditions from the city, sparking demonstrations that attracted at least a million protesters.
The unrest has also encouraged some wealth managers to choose to set up in Singapore after also considering Hong Kong, the main offshore hubs for wealth management in Asia, Reuters reported.
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