Singaporean banks continue to dominate the rankings for the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) region, both in terms of Tier 1 capital and profitability. Singapore-based DBS Bank tops the ranking, with $21.17bn of Tier 1 capital, making it the 58th largest lender in the world according to The Banker’s Top 1000 World Banks 2012 ranking. It is followed by two other Singaporean lenders, Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and United Overseas Bank (UOB), which have $14.31bn and $13.85bn of Tier 1 capital and rank 84th and 85th in the world, respectively.
These three institutions also topped the Asean rankings in terms of pre-tax profits. Again, DBS Bank was the leader, posting pre-tax profits of $2.87bn for the year-end 2011. OCBC was second with pre-tax profits of $2.27bn, followed by UOB with $2.16bn. When the data for these banks is aggregated, however, the figures are not as impressive. Although the three Singapore-based institutions recorded asset growth of 17% between 2010 and 2011, pre-tax profit actually declined by 0.1%.
