by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Banking & Financial Services, Singapore Company Stories
⚡ TL;DROCBC was formed in 1932 from the merger of three Chinese-owned banks and is now Singapore’s second-largest bank. Its distinguishing feature is breadth: alongside commercial banking it owns Great Eastern in insurance and Bank of Singapore in private...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Banking & Financial Services, Singapore Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRDBS was founded in 1968 as Singapore’s development finance institution and is now Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets. Its defining chapter was a decade-long digital transformation that turned a reputation for poor service into a global...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Singapore Company Stories, Sovereign Wealth & State Capitalism
⚡ TL;DRTemasek and GIC are both Singaporean state investors, but they are not variations of the same thing. Temasek is an investment company that owns assets outright, mostly in equities and increasingly in private markets. GIC is a fund manager that invests the...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Singapore Company Stories, Sovereign Wealth & State Capitalism
⚡ TL;DRThe Monetary Authority of Singapore is the country’s central bank and integrated financial regulator. Unusually, it conducts monetary policy through the exchange rate rather than interest rates, supervises banks, insurers and capital markets, and...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Singapore Company Stories, Sovereign Wealth & State Capitalism
⚡ TL;DRGovernment-linked companies are the commercially run firms in which the Singapore state, mostly through Temasek, holds significant equity. They include DBS, Singtel, Singapore Airlines, PSA, ST Engineering, Sembcorp, CapitaLand and Keppel, and together...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 2, 2026 | Singapore Company Stories, Sovereign Wealth & State Capitalism
⚡ TL;DRGIC is the manager of Singapore’s foreign reserves, established in 1981 to invest the country’s surpluses over very long horizons. It does not disclose its size, reports returns as a rolling twenty-year annualised real figure, and invests...
