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Wednesday, December 2, 2009 By

DBS’ Dubai loans exceed most foreign banks’ UAE loans

It looks like Singapore's DBS Bank has a greater loan exposure to Dubai than the majority of foreign banks in the United Arab Emirates.

DBS says its total exposure to Dubai is about 1.8 billion Singapore dollars ($1.28 billion).

"The bank believes the situation is manageable," it said in a statement on Monday. "As of today, the only credit that is captured under the standstill notice is a SGD558 million (USD400 million) bilateral loan to Dubai World Finance which represents 0.2% of DBS’ total balance sheet."

That may be so.

But DBS' $1.28 billion worth of loans to Dubai is more than most of the foreign banks had lent to the entire United Arab Emirates by the end of last year, according to the Emirates Banks Association.

These were the top lenders, according to the  Emirates Banks Association publication titled Financial Position of Banks in the United Arab Emirates, Issue 2007-2008.


RankBankLoans in thousands of AED
1HSBC Middle East Bank62,555,055 ($17,030,124)
2Standard Chartered28,544,360 ($7,770,894)
3Barclays Bank13,137,733 ($3,576,793)
4ABN-Amro8,234,372.00 ($2,241,859)
5Arab Bank7,663,117 ($2,086,337)
6Citibank7,058,598 ($1,921,752)
7Bank of Baroda6,536,936 ($1,779,726)
8Bank Sedarat Iran6,375,766 ($1,735,847)
9BNP Paribas6,200,101 ($1,688,016.61)
10Lloyds TSB Bank5,774,513 ($1,572,150)
11Habib Bank AG Zurich5,260,91 ($1,432,319.65)
12United Bank3,075,281 ($837,266.84)

For some reason, DBS was not among the 28 foreign banks in the United Arab Emirates named in the Emirates Banks Association publication.

But its $1.28 billion worth of loans to Dubai is more than the 12th ranked United Bank had lent to the entire UAE.

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Sunday, November 29, 2009 By

StanChart’s Dubai hopes dashed. DBS also hit?

Singapore banks are unlikely to be seriously affected by the Dubai debt crisis, said a government minister, after Reuters reported it could affect DBS Bank.

That would have been a double blow for the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings.

It owns big stakes in both DBS and Standard Chartered, which has been hardest hit of all the foreign banks.

The British bank, partly owned by a Dubai World company, has invested more heavily in the Gulf than other big banks and sounded bullish right till disaster struck.

It forecast Dubai would grow by 3 per cent next year — and the United Arab Emirates, as a whole, by 5 per cent — only a day before Dubai asked for more time to repay its debts, according to the Gulf News.

The Khaleej Times, in Dubai, on Friday published a Reuters report which said:

Exposure to Dubai could have a "meaningful impact" on banks across Asia, said Daniel Tabbush, Asia banks analyst at CLSA in Bangkok.

"Within banking specifically, the biggest exposure appears to be with Standard Chartered and, secondly, with HSBC, followed by DBS," Tabbush said, adding that not all banks in Asia have given details on their exposure.

Shares of Standard Chartered fell nearly 5 percent in Hong Kong, and HSBC dropped 5.4 percent. Singapore's DBS Group was untraded due to a market holiday. DBS was not immediately available for comment.

However, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Finance Minister Lim Hwee Hua said she does not expect Singapore banks to have a large exposure, if any at all, to the Dubai debt crisis, reported Channel NewsAsia.

An Emirates Banks Association publication titled Financial Position of Banks in the United Arab Emirates, Issue 2007-2008, shows that Standard Chartered was second only to HSBC among foreign banks in terms of assets (AED71.24 billion or about $19.4 billion), deposits (AED29.9 billion) and loans (AED28.54 billion) at the end of 2008.

DBS is not among the 28 foreign commercial banks in the UAE named in the publication.

DBS has a 50 per cent stake in the Islamic Bank of Asia, whose shareholders include more than 30 investors from prominent families and industrial groups from Gulf Cooperation Council countries and which has offices in Bahrain.

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Thursday, February 19, 2009 By

Singapore leaders more tolerant than Mandelson?

Singapore is becoming more tolerant. The government has not reacted to criticism about the state of the economy with the fury of the British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.

When the Starbucks founder Howard Schultz said in a television interview, “The UK is in a spiral,” Lord Mandelson responded with a four-letter word. “Why should I have that guy running down the country?” he told the Telegraph. “Who the —- is he?"

Such outbursts have not been reported from the Singapore government, which has also been getting a fair bit of flak about the state of the economy and the billions lost by the two sovereign wealth funds, Temasek Holdings and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

Singapore’s leaders have a history of suing critics for libel, but in the current downturn at least they have held their fire.

Another example comes to mind.

Dubai has banned a novel which features a gay sheikh with an English boyfriend, reports the Guardian. Geraldine Beddell’s novel,The Gulf Between Us, published by Penguin, was to have been launched at the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature starting in Dubai on February 26. But the book has been banned, prompting the writer Margaret Atwood to pull out of the event in protest.

Singapore, on the other hand, does not always ban books critical of it. Ian Buruma’s God’s Dust: A Modern Asian Journey and Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, for example, are available in the National Library branches.

The Emirates book festival incidentally has invited a host of big names. Louis de Bernieres, Frank McCourt, Karin Slaughter, Wilbur Smith and Mark Tully are among the writers expected to attend the festival in Dubai. Imagine Singapore Airlines hosting such an event!

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