DBS will focus its priorities on existing businesses first, before attempting new takeovers or ventures, said Mr. Peter Seah, chairman of DBS Group.
Following the rapid growth through acquisitions since the 1997-1998 Asian economic crisis, DBS is now focusing to improve the performance of its current businesses through better customer service and management.
“The immediate priority for DBS is to work its existing franchise to deliver better value for shareholders – to ensure that we have the right management team,” said Mr. Seah.
“We cannot be all things to all people; we’ll have to focus on those businesses that we are good at. It’s something that I would like to see the bank do very quickly, so that we get our house in order as quickly as possible,” he added.
Mr. Koh Boon Hwee, former chairman of DBS Group who was known for his active participation in setting the strategy of the group, said that acquisition opportunities that would give DBS a bigger share of a key market “are obviously something that we have to keep in our view”.
“But we must make quite sure that it adds value to the bank’s bottomline and that we have the bench strength to manage it well. There’s no point in having a huge footprint and not getting value out of that,” he added.
Mr. Piyush Gupta, chief executive of DBS Group, has made it a key priority to fix the consumer banking business of the bank in Singapore.
Recently, the bank appointed Mr. Bertie Cheng, former chief executive of POSBank, to give them the know-how in rebuilding POSB as the “people’s bank”.
“There have been issues in the past as to how we positioned POSB; that’s being corrected, and we are going to, hopefully, create a POSB that our customers want, not a POSB that we want them to have,” said Mr. Seah.
Improving the performance of DBS in Hong Kong is also among its top priorities and is key to boosting the bank’s overall return on equity, which is currently the lowest of the three leading banks in Singapore.
“Hong Kong is a very important market where we’ve underperformed. I plan to spend a fair bit of time personally to look at our Hong Kong operations,” he said.
Mr. Seah added: “For the last few years, we focused quite a bit on the sale of investment products and the treasury side of the business in Hong Kong. We need to strengthen our focus on the core businesses – the corporate and consumer business. We’re also looking to strengthening our team in Hong Kong.”