DBS

DBS: (The Edge) Has CEO Piyush Gupta turned DBS into the sector’s biggest bargain? With HK earnings at a record high of $750m, and doubling over the last 3 yrs, DBS appears to be finally on its way to earning a decent return on an investment that haunted it for a decade, and pay the way for further growth across Asia. Note that Gupta had shift banks strategy in HK to focus on SME’s and narrowed its consumer banking business to affluent clients. Grp was thus able to work the China mkt out of HK very well. Grp add that trade finance and cash mgt have been important drivers of its business and the positioning of its various units to capture these flows makes DBS a preferred bank. CEo note that the exposure tt DBS has built in HK, China and India gives it a superior footprint vs peers , as it has a pan-Asian net work, as India’s trade with China, Asean’s trade with China etc is a lot more relevant that Asean’s trade with itself. Regarding Indonesia, Gupta sees an opportunity to provide DBS with as broad a business in Asean as the bank currently has in SG. Indonesia is the only country where the bank plans to replicate its Singapore strategy. If you add DBS and Danamon in Indo, you will get a strong end to end universal bank.