DBS said on Monday that it was buying Société Générale’s Asian private banking business in Singapore and Hong Kong for US$220 million in cash, handing it deep relationships with some of Asia’s most wealthy individuals.
The move boosts Singapore’s largest lender’s high net worth assets under management AUM by more than 23%, prompting DBS’s Chief Executive Piyush Gupta to dub it a “watershed event” for the bank.
DBS is bulking up at a time of growing competition and rising costs for private bankers even as their wealthy clients grow even richer.
By integrating SGPB Asia into a larger platform, DBS...