The boldfaced names in money management can’t get enough of Singapore these days. Billionaire Ray Dalio has set up shop to manage some of his personal fortune there. Ken Griffin and Steve Cohen are on hiring sprees.
From Singapore’s earliest years as an independent state, it has aimed to be one of the key locales through which the world’s money flows. And as a haven for wealth and a hub for asset managers, the "Switzerland of Asia” has been notching up enough wins to shed any regional asterisk. It also saw an influx of finance workers and business escaping Hong Kong’s harsh "zero-COVID" policies last year, though it still has a long way to go before displacing Hong Kong as a trading center and base for global banks looking for a gateway to China.
Wealth overseen by the asset management industry has doubled in just six years, to about $4 trillion, according to central bank figures, and about 80% of that is foreign. BlackRock is expanding in Singapore, as is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which shut down its equity team in Hong Kong this year. Even Swiss banks are getting into the act: UBS Group’s offices dominate an entire city block in a prime shopping district, with a staff of 3,000, a private gym and a cappuccino bar. It’s now the firm’s largest operation in Asia.