SINGAPORE — Southeast Asia’s biggest bank by assets is making a pitch to investors that Singapore and its businesses can help them navigate many of the uncertainties around the globe.
“I love it that the ‘Little Red Dot’ we all call home was open … predictable, and almost kind of boring,” said CEO of DBS Group Tan Su Shan at the DBS Asia Future Forward conference in Singapore, referring to the city-state by one of its nicknames. “In this huge time of volatility, ‘boring’ is not bad, right?”
The investing and business climate worldwide has been upended by everything from trade wars and El Niño-related weather issues to the Iran conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war. Singapore, with its AAA-rated debt, stable political environment and position at the heart of Asia, is seen by many as a bastion of stability.
Tan said similar characteristics define DBS.
DBS has “one of the safest credit ratings in the world,” she told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. Temasek, the state-owned global investment company that managed assets worth 518 billion Singapore dollars ($404 billion) as of March 31 and is seen as contributing to Singapore’s fiscal stability, is DBS’s biggest shareholder.
DBS is also in a strong position to navigate the economic uncertainty around the world, Tan said.
“Trade and supply chains are all fragmented,” she said. “If you need to diversify your upstream supply chain, just because you’re worried about geopolitics, because you’re worried about blockages, because you’re worried about the war and the Strait of Hormuz, DBS is a partner to help you … We can help our customers pivot from one market to another quite quickly.”
Tan also addressed management of a workforce in the age of artificial intelligence, and how to find people who have the right skills to navigate the technology.
“Humans intrinsically are nimble and agile … I tell all my managers, hire for attitude – because you know you can’t buy attitude, you can’t train attitude.”
—CNBC’s Ying Shan Lee contributed to this article.