PNGMK wrote:And Singapore banks are NOT full of similarly ill begotten gains? Maybe not as much but definitely somewhat.
As a bank you have two competing forces:
- The desire to make maximum profit via garnering as many clients and their assets as possible.
vs
- The terror of making global headlines - 'XYZ Bank funded North Koreas tyrant president'.
I.e. taking on the wrong sort of client. It's a bit like a faulty O-ring on a space shuttle fuel tank, one little piece (dodgy client) potentially ends the whole operation.
Anyhow, Singapore seems to be home to many larger banks' branches. They have and will be aware of reputational-risk. It's standard practise to profile clients and determine the source of their funds to confirm it's not ill gotten.
Vlad Breznovsky walks in one day. 28, owns several coal mines in the Ukraine, lives in Belgravia, is worth $280 million, and he's looking at opening an account with $25mm, for starters. What would you do? ('Do you feel lucky'?).
The EU put *major* heat on Switzerland to disclose client information (despite them not being members of the EU!). That would have been the end of Swiss private banking, one of their major industries, with a longer history than that of the French Republic.
Why would they do that? Because the Swiss banking industry is so successful, 'too successful', and the French hate others who are 'unfairly' successful. 'All of us must work no more than 35hrs a week, take a 2 hr lunch, and thus it'll be cake for all. If anyone wants to work more than that they're cake-thieves and for the public good they must be prosecuted'.
Where was I ...
To set up here in SG, you need scale. Banks with scale have a lot to lose. Cyprus, most people probably haven't heard of it. If I read a headline 'Russian mob dashed to stash cash in Cyprus' ... well, you wouldn't ever see that headline, as it's like the sky is blue, it's not news.
So, no. SG, bigger players, too much to lose. Cyprus, anyone can set up for business, a Kazakh start-up bank operating from a bedroom, or me, you? Sure...
