SINGAPORE – It is an overused phrase, but it really will be the end of an era for South-east Asia’s largest bank when star banker Piyush Gupta retires as DBS boss in March 2025.
The new era that beckons will present myriad challenges to successor Tan Su Shan, including a shifting macroeconomic environment and more demanding customers, but her experience and the bank’s strong position put her in good stead to handle them, observers told The Straits Times.
The Aug 7 announcement on the changes was hardly a surprise. Ms Tan, 56, has been with the lender for 14 years and was one of the senior bankers tipped to be the next chief executive. She is group head of institutional banking, and has also been appointed deputy CEO.
Chairman Peter Seah said the bank had benchmarked its candidates against the top names in the financial industry and broader business community. This will be the first time DBS has filled the top job internally.
Professor and former investment banker Rick Marchese said Ms Tan’s appointment reflects DBS’ steady growth: “When you look at candidates, typically, what you see is that you don’t bring somebody externally in unless something is kind of broken, and you need a fixer.”
Mr Willie Tanoto, a senior director in Fitch Ratings’ Asia-Pacific financial institutions team, said DBS has become one of the stronger banking franchises in the region under Mr Gupta. “This is a hard-earned competitive advantage that was built up over many years… during a period when many other banking groups exited a pan-regional retail banking strategy,” he added.
Mr Gupta joined DBS in 2009 and guided the bank through the aftermath of the global financial crisis. He oversaw the bank’s digital transformation – although a string of service disruptions in recent years has tainted this journey – and led it to achieve strong financial results.
DBS’s return on equity (ROE) ranked seventh among the 100 largest banks in the world as at the end of 2023, up from 46th in 2015.
Around 90 per cent of the bank’s income comes from consumer banking and wealth management, and the institutional banking business. Ms Tan has spent the bulk of her DBS career managing these units, and also led day-to-day efforts to implement the bank’s digital strategy.
Her experience running the bank’s key engines equips her well for the CEO role, said Mr Thilan Wickramasinghe, Singapore head of research at Maybank Investment Banking Group.
“We’ve also had interest rates rising over the last couple of years. That’s a very difficult environment to work in, particularly when it comes to corporate clients – managing that process, keeping NPLs (non-performing loans) low, supporting margins. All those factors probably contributed (to her being selected for the role),” he added.
Ms Tan interned at DBS as a university student. She began her career with ING Baring Securities before working at Morgan Stanley, first as an executive director and later as head of private wealth management. She spent several years in between her roles at Morgan Stanley as Citi’s regional head for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.
Outside of DBS, Ms Tan sits on the advisory board of Dyson’s family office, Weybourne Holdings, and is a board member of Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust. She previously served as a Nominated MP from 2012 to 2014.
Mr Gupta knew Ms Tan from his time at Citi – he spent 27 years at the bank – and hired her from Morgan Stanley.
The road ahead for Ms Tan is not without challenges. She said at a briefing on Aug 7 that DBS will have to navigate changes in the macroeconomic environment, volatile markets and the rise of generative artificial intelligence, but the bank will continue to be agile and adapt accordingly.
Mr Tanoto said: “In addition to managing extraneous challenges, the bank is going to have to grapple with balancing the need to grow outside of a largely saturated home market against taking on new risks in jurisdictions where it does not have an incumbency advantage.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-08 10:02:00
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