What's your view on the recent round of Singapore consolidation
The consolidation five to three, maybe two two factors. In the short term it eliminates two of the more aggressive players in the local market, who have been the fiercest at focusing on the middle market and consumer. Eliminating them should be helpful in terms of improving the pricing of the Singapore banking market.
The second issue is recognizing that Singapore has gone ex-growth from a domestic economy standpoint. Having five banks was inefficient. Youll now have three banks that will share 80% of the deposits. Foreign banks control 20%.
Three banks controlling 80% of deposits is actually unprecedented anywhere....
