SINGAPORE, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Singapore’s central bank on Friday warned banks of risks from relying on financial markets to back their U.S. dollar and other foreign currency loans amid the current economic uncertainty.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) also said in its annual financial stability review that it expects the inflation rate to drop to as low as 2.5 percent in 2012.

While banks in the Southeast Asian city-state are well capitalised and asset quality is improving, their loan-to-deposit ratio (LTD) for foreign currency loans rose to 124 percent in the third quarter from 99.7 percent a year ago, MAS said in the report.

“Singapore dollar funding for domestic lending remains adequate (but) non-Singapore dollar funding risk bears close monitoring,” it said.

Asian currencies have fallen in recent weeks as Europe’s deepening debt crisis drove investors out of riskier assets into the relative safety of the greenback, resulting in tight supply of the U.S. dollar in Asia. Singapore is one of the region’s main financial centres.

“As the global financial crisis showed, a sudden spike in global risk aversion can trigger a global U.S. dollar liquidity crunch with knock-on effects on the Singapore banking system,” the central bank said.

Analysts say MAS was highlighting its concern over the higher proportion of foreign currency loans relative to deposits, especially given the deepening eurozone crisis and resultant funding problems that may follow.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Insured losses from Thai floods could be in double-digit billions and the disaster will lead to a re-assessment of weather risks to industries in Asia, a senior official from global insurer Allianz said.

Calculating the true cost of the floods could take years in terms of working out the lost business to Thailand from investors who might now choose to invest in other countries, said Lutz Fullgraf, Allianz’s regional CEO for global corporate and specialty.

He said the losses comprise compensation to building owners in Thailand as well as manufacturers around the world who have suffered disruptions from the closure of Thai factories.

“This for Thailand is definitely the costliest event, in terms of the insured values, even if you take into consideration the tsunami of 2004 and last year’s riots. The loss here is much bigger,” said Lutz.

He pointed to an estimate by Thailand’s insurance commissioner of more than $30 billion, although it was too early to verify the figure.

“People did not have that (wealth and asset) accumulation expectation for risks in Thailand. Even if it is $20 billion, I think it will top the list of insured flood losses over the past 10 years,” he said in an interview in Singapore.

The disaster would lead the insurance industry to re-evaluate weather and other natural disaster risks to Asia’s rapidly expanding industrial zones, many of which are in areas vulnerable to earthquakes, storms and flooding, Lutz said.

SINGAPORE, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Singapore on Thursday reported a sharper-than-expected fall in October exports as shipments of semiconductors plunged, reflecting further weakness in the global electronics industry.

The Southeast Asian city-state’s non-oil domestic exports (NODX) fell 16.2 percent in October from a year ago, confounding economists who had on average had expected an 8 percent drop.

On a month-on-month seasonally adjusted basis, non-oil domestic exports fell 5.9 percent.

Semiconductor exports, which make up nearly half of Singapore’s electronic exports, plunged 33.4 percent from a year ago, partly reflecting the sharp drop in the closely followed monthly book-to-bill ratio published by the U.S.-based Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).

“The sharper-than-expected contraction in NODX is in part due to high base, but the continued and deeper weakness in electronic exports looks worrying,” said Chow Penn Nee, an economist at United Overseas Bank.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of Christmas orders amidst lackluster demand in the U.S. and EU,” she added.

Chow said UOB might lower its full-year GDP estimate for Singapore from the current 4.8 percent, which is already below the government’s forecast of around 5 percent.

SINGAPORE/TOKYO (Reuters) – Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund said on Saturday it has sold most of its holdings of Olympus Corp (7733.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on concern of wrongdoing, the first major shareholder to show it has lost confidence in the scandal-hit Japanese medical device and camera maker.

Japanese authorities are investigating Olympus after the company admitted this week that it hid investment losses for decades using funds from M&A payments. Media reports on Saturday said police and regulators were joining forces in a rare collaborative effort to examine the cover-up.

GIC GIC.UL, which is the acronym for Government of Singapore Investment Corp, was the 10th biggest shareholder in Olympus, with 2.17 percent as of the end of March, according to the latest Olympus annual report.

“GIC disposed of almost all of its investments on first suspicion of possible wrongdoing in Olympus,” the Singapore fund said in a statement.

GIC added it had only an insignificant holding under a portfolio managed by an external fund manager. It said the majority of its investment was made in the midst of the global financial crisis.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigations unit, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) will team up to investigate the Olympus cover-up of investment losses, Japanese media reported on Saturday.

Nikkei has said the concealment could have exceeded 130 billion yen ($1.68 billion) at its peak, and said the company’s creditors were likely to press for a change in lending terms.

SINGAPORE/TOKYO, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund said on Saturday it has sold most of its holdings of Olympus Corp on concerns of wrongdoing, the first major shareholder to show that it has lost all confidence in the scandal-hit Japanese medical device and camera maker.

Japanese authorities are investigating Olympus after the company admitted this week that it hid investment losses for decades using funds from M&A payments. Media reports on Saturday said police and regulators were joining forces in a rare collaborative effort to examine the cover-up.

GIC, which is the acronym for Government of Singapore Investment Corp, was the 10th biggest shareholder in Olympus, with 2.17 percent as of the end of March, according to Olympus’ latest annual report.

“GIC disposed of almost all of its investments on first suspicion of possible wrongdoing in Olympus,” the Singapore fund said in a statement.

GIC added it currently has only an insignificant holding under a portfolio managed by an external fund manager. It said the majority of its investment was made in the midst of the global financial crisis.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigations unit, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission will team up to probe Olympus’ cover-up of investment losses, Japanese media reported on Saturday.

Nikkei has said the concealment could have exceeded 130 billion yen ($1.68 billion) at its peak, and said the company’s creditors were likely to press for a change in lending terms.

GENEVA/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – UBS would be wrong to ditch its investment bank following a trading scandal, since it is a major draw for rich entrepreneurs seeking corporate finance expertise for their own firms, rival private bankers said.

“UBS is growing primarily because of Asian growth. The reason is because of the growth of its investment bank,” said Louay Al-Doory, head of global business development at Swiss boutique wealth manager Reyl & Cie.

“Will they sell their investment bank? Well yes, they could, but they will lose growth in its wealth management business,” Al-Doory, who used to work at UBS, told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit in Geneva.

Since the news broke last month that alleged rogue trading lost UBS $2.3 billion, the bank has faced calls in Switzerland to split off or ringfence its troubled investment bank from its core business managing the money of wealthy clients.

Interim Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti, appointed after Oswald Gruebel quit over the loss, is working on an overhaul of the investment bank ahead of an investor day on November 17.

But Chief Financial Officer Tom Naratil said on Tuesday the investment bank was essential to meet the needs of wealth management clients, particularly as UBS seeks to defend its global dominance in managing the assets of the ultra rich.

It is a model its rivals still emulate.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) (RY.TO: Quote, Profile, Research), the nation’s largest lender, aims to more than double private banking assets in Asia to C$25 billion ($23.8 billion) by 2015, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

Asia has become a battleground for global and local private banks, who are competing for market share in a region that is seen outpacing the United States and Europe in wealth creation.

According to the latest annual Merrill Lynch-Capgemini World Wealth Report, Asia is home to 3.3 million millionaires, second only to North America, which has 3.4 million high-networth individuals, and ahead of Europe, which had 3.1 million.

“From 2011 to 2015, our plan is to grow to C$25 billion,” Barend Janssens, RBC’s head of wealth management for emerging markets, told the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Singapore.

RBC also expects to increase the number of frontline bankers and brokers in Asia to 100-120 by that time from around 60 now, he added. Right now, RBC is focusing more on hiring people for support functions such as product development and compliance rather than relationship managers, he said.

RBC currently administers about C$11 billion in Asian private banking assets, and the region accounts for just a fraction of the C$525 billion administered by the bank globally.

The wealth management unit operates out of Singapore and Hong Kong with representative offices in Brunei and Beijing.

SINGAPORE/GENEVA (Reuters) – Wealthy individuals should buy gold as it has become an attractive investment following last month’s sharp reversal, private bankers in Asia said on Monday.

“Gold at $2,000 is absolutely, potentially on the uptrack, despite the selloff. That is sort of the immediate target,” Marcel Kreis, Credit Suisse’s head of private banking for Asia-Pacific, told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit in Singapore.

The $2,000 per ounce level was Credit Suisse’s 12-month target, he added.

Gold rose more than 1 percent on Monday as falling equities and lingering worries about a debt crisis in Europe drew investors to the precious metal, which posted its biggest quarterly rise this year.

Spot gold was quoted around $1,655 an ounce around 0840 GMT, up from $1,624 at the start of the Asian day.

Spot gold was up 2 percent at $1,655.19 an ounce at 1350 GMT. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were up 2.2 percent to $1,657.40 an ounce.

For the quarter ended September, gold posted a quarterly gain of 8 percent — its biggest this year, despite a drop of 11 percent last month.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Credit Suisse CGSN.VX, which ranks among Asia’s top five private banks, signaled it may cut costs amid a tough business environment for the next two years and warned that private banks have slowed hiring in the region.

Asia’s private banking industry has been hit by rising costs and heightened caution among rich clients to invest in risky, high-margin financial products, derailing a recovery after the 2008/09 financial crisis.

“In the last two or three years, client appetite for risky, longer-term investment hasn’t returned to pre-2008 levels. That, from a transactional income point of view, is challenging,” Marcel Kreis, the Swiss bank’s head of private banking for Asia-Pacific, told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit in Singapore.

“Investors are still gun-shy.”

Kreis, who oversees the Asian business excluding India, said the bank has already announced it will cut 1 billion Swiss francs from its cost base globally and the benefits of this cost-reduction will be realized in 2012.

The cost cuts will also affect Asia as a proportion of its size to the bank’s overall business, Kreis said, without providing details.

“We review our cost base, we review the investments that we have made and we are going to make in light of what we think is a relatively challenging environment for the next two years,” Kreis said.

SINGAPORE, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Zain Fancy, the former head of Morgan Stanley’s Asia real estate investment business, has set up a firm in Singapore to invest in small and medium-sized properties following the end of a legal dispute with Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

Fancy had left Morgan Stanley in 2008 to join Och-Ziff as head of a joint venture between the U.S. fund manager and several ex-Morgan Stanley executives that would invest in property.

Fancy’s Clifton Real Estate, named after the area in Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi where he was born, will focus on Singapore initially and look at buying assets worth up to $100 million.

“Our focus is on small to mid-sized transactions that are of less interest to some of the larger developers or investors,” Fancy, who is now a Singapore citizen, told Reuters in an email.

“For smaller investment transactions, we would capitalize those ourselves. For some of the larger transactions we may bring in potential co-investors to invest alongside us,” he said.

Fancy said the next 12-18 months could be a “very interesting time” to invest in property across Asia as a weak economy presents opportunities.

He declined to comment on his dispute with former employer Och-Ziff except that the two had “mutually agreed to end their joint venture.”