In Good Company: Bank of Singapore's Bahren Shaari wants to build the SIA of private banking

Bank of Singapore CEO wants to transform the bank into a global brand

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It has been a decade since Bahren Shaari arrived at OCBC to help start Bank of Singapore (BOS), which grew out of the parent acquiring the Asia private banking business of ING Group, where he was employed at the time after long years with Swiss banking giant UBS.

Then, as now, Asia was the fastest-growing market for private banking and OCBC's share of the pie was small - a mere US$6.7 billion of assets under management (AUM). Combined with ING's US$15.8 billion of AUM and 150 relationship managers, three times that of BOS, scale was no longer an issue.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on May 12, 2019, with the headline In Good Company: Bank of Singapore's Bahren Shaari wants to build the SIA of private banking. Subscribe