As of now, American voters will be faced with a choice between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. And business leaders around the world — including in Southeast Asia, which is trying to balance U.S.-China relations — are plotting what both outcomes will mean.
DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, speaking to a Reuters conference audience on Tuesday, said the general view of Trump’s policy suggestions is that they paint a “pretty negative picture.” The banking CEO pointed to the former president’s call for rates as high as 60%, suggesting they will lead to inflation and could prompt the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high. That in turn will put pressure on currencies around the world, some of which are already at record lows against the US dollar.
Still, Gupta, responding to questions about U.S.-China relations, saw a possible silver lining to a Trump presidency. Trump is a “dealmaker… who is not ideologically driven to anything,” he said. The former president would like to “make deals,” the DBS CEO suggested, helping him with Chinese officials who “also like to make deals.”
DBS is Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets. With a turnover of $25 billion in 2023, DBS Group Holding is at number 10 Fortunethe inaugural Southeast Asia 500, which ranks the region’s largest companies by revenue.
Go ‘Long Asia’
Geopolitics aside, Gupta was optimistic about Asia’s economic development. He noted that Asia, with growth rates between 4 and 5%, is growing twice as fast as the rest of the world.
Under Gupta, DBS focuses on major economies such as Greater China, India and Indonesia and invests in those markets. Last August, the Singaporean bank became Taiwan’s largest foreign bank by assets after acquiring Citigroup’s consumer banking business on the island.
On Tuesday, Gupta revealed that DBS now has a nearly 19% stake in China’s Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank, making it the Chinese bank’s largest shareholder. (DBS purchased a 13% stake in 2021).
In its annual report, DBS said its stake in Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank gives the company a foothold in the Greater Bay Area, an economic region in southern China that includes the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macau. Gupta said Tuesday he was “so optimistic about that region.”
Yet DBS’s CEO downplayed the possibility of an “earth-shattering, game-changing merger and acquisition,” instead saying the Singaporean bank will look for “bolt-on deals” that will boost its asset management, SME and will expand retail and transaction services. .
“Any large-scale acquisition will take too long, be too messy and distract from the future,” he said.
When asked whether DBS’s regional moves were risky, the DBS CEO said you “have to make a call about whether you want to be in Asia for a long time.” You can’t be “Asia for long without a view of North Asia,” Gupta said.
