SINGAPORE — Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets is pitching investors that it can help Singapore and its businesses weather much of the uncertainty around the world.
“I loved that the ‘Little Red Dot’ that we all call home was open…predictable, almost boring at times,” DBS Group CEO Tan Hsu Shan said at the DBS Asia Future Forward conference in Singapore, referring to the city-state by one of its nicknames. “In this era of great change, ‘boredom’ isn’t a bad thing, right?”
From trade wars and El Niño-related weather issues to the Iran conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war, the investment and business environments around the world are undergoing dramatic changes. Singapore is seen by many as a bastion of stability due to its AAA debt rating, stable political environment and central location in Asia.
Mr Tan said similar characteristics define DBS.
He told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of the conference that DBS is “one of the safest credit ratings in the world.” Temasek, a state-owned global investment firm that manages assets worth S$518 billion ($404 billion) as of March 31 and is seen as contributing to Singapore’s financial stability, is DBS’s largest shareholder.
DBS is also in a strong position to weather economic uncertainty around the world, Mr Tan said.
“Trade and supply chains are all fragmented,” she says. “If you need to diversify your upstream supply chain because you’re worried about geopolitics, traffic blockades, war or the Strait of Hormuz, DBS is the partner to help you. We help our customers move quickly from one market to another.”
Mr Tan also addressed workforce management in the age of artificial intelligence and how to find people with the right skills to navigate technology.
“Humans are inherently nimble and nimble. I tell all managers to hire for attitude, because we know you can’t buy attitude and you can’t train attitude.”
—CNBC’s Ying Shan Lee contributed to this article.
