Remember DBS sold S’poreans and Honkies toxic notes and paid off Honkies but gave the finger to S’poreans? https://atans1.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/what-abt-high-notes-sm-goh/
Well Raju Rajan was the then head of consumer banking. He has “decided to pursue new opportunities outside DBS’. BTW before he became head of consumer banking, he headed DBS’s IT team. The failure of the systems was on his successor’s watch.
Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported he is going to Deutsche Asset Management. Death wish by Deutsche?
Now that Mr “destroyer of value” has left, is DBS a screaming buy?
It has a great chairman. It recently appointed two gd men as head of consumer banking and as S’pore country mgr. And it appointed Bertie Cheng as its adviser. Mr PosBank had retired moons ago after DBS bot PosBank.
But was it wise to employ a Latin American (albeit one with plenty of Asian experience) as country mgr in HK? Honkies are parochial. Even HSBC and StanChart make sure that local Hongkies run the show in their HK retail. And DBS HK is largely retail.
And the newish CEO is another FT. Lest I be be accused of being anti-FT, since the late 19990s, FTs been CEO and everything has gone wrong: overpaying for Dao Heng, buying smallish stakes in regional banks ( strategy being reversed now), employing Raja Rajan, putting customers into dud investments, lost money in Indian investment, neglecting PosBank brand (now changing), etc etc. One CEO skivved by dying short time after being appointed. OK I’m mean there.
I’ll not comment that mgt remains top- heavy with people from Citi, the bank that the US govmin had to nationalise because it was badly run. To be fair, Citi Asia is one of the profit centres of Citi, even in the crisis. And Citi’s mgt in Asia has a gd reputation.
N0te I hold HSBC shares, and UOB shares via Haw Par. And I’ll still avoid DBS. Mgt has yet to show it can execute its strategic vision (latest).
Related post
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 