SINGAPORE, Oct 25 (Reuters) – The pan-Asian “girl band” Blush has been around for only 11 months but already has a track record more established groups might envy — a single that hit number three on the U.S. dance music charts and rapper Snoop Dogg in one of their songs.

This week, the English-singing group, whose members hail from Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Korea and India, will open for the Black Eyed Peas at their Manila concert. They appeared at a Justin Bieber concert in Hong Kong earlier this year.

“The goal for Blush is to become really the first Asian singers to make it big in the West,” said John Niermann, a former president of Walt Disney Co’s Asia-Pacific unit, who brought the band together last year after a broad talent search.

“The idea started several years ago when I was curious why an Asian singer had not really made it to the top of the charts in America,” he told Reuters in Singapore.

The group is made up of Japan’s Natsuko Danjo, Victoria Chan from Hong Kong, Korea’s Ji Hae Lee, Alisha Budhrani from India and Angeli Flores from the Philippines.

Ranging in age from 19 to 28, most of the stylishly-slender group members sang and danced from childhood, dreaming of stardom, according to the group’s website. But the 26-year-old Lee only began singing seriously after graduating from Korea’s Hoseo University — with a degree in law.

“Manufactured” pop groups have been around for over 20 years. But Blush is the first to be made up entirely of singers from across Asia who perform in English, in an attempt to broaden their global appeal. Blush is also unusual among Asian performers in the sense that it hopes to make it big in the United States before becoming popular in its home region.

SINGAPORE/PERTH, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Australian oil and gas firm Woodside Petroleum and East Timor have both signalled a more conciliatory approach to talks on the stalled Sunrise LNG project, after a prolonged and sometimes bitter dispute over the location of the plant.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta said on Friday his compatriots who had met new Woodside CEO Peter Coleman were “positively impressed by him” and expressed hope that the two sides will make a breakthrough to develop the large gas project.

“I believe they can agree on a solution though what it is, I don’t know,” Ramos-Horta said at a lunch talk organised by Singapore’s Foreign Correspondents Association.

“The mood is positive.”

East Timorese officials have told media in recent weeks that Woodside had agreed to revisit the idea of onshore processing from the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea, which the East Timor government wants in order to create jobs, instead of a floating liquefied natural gas facility.

Woodside’s new chief, Coleman, who recently held meetings with the government in Dili, has indicated he is keen to have more constructive talks, but has stopped short of saying it will reconsider an onshore option.

Earlier on Friday, Woodside reiterated in its third-quarter report its intention to hold further talks with the East Timor government on the project.

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Singapore-based hedge fund Komodo Capital Management Pte Ltd is liquidating its flagship global macro fund KC Asia, its founder and Chief Investment Officer Angus Cameron told Reuters on Tuesday.

Cameron, who founded the firm in 2006, said the fund had returned money to investors and was moving operations to Australia for “personal reasons”.

The hedge fund manager, who earlier worked at Millennium Capital Management and Bank of America Corp , said he hoped to start managing money for clients from mid-2012.

“I will continue to manage my own money, which I have been doing since I started the fund, and I will be managing money on a number of platforms and also for several clients,” he said.

Komodo Capital managed about $40 million before it started returning money to investors. In 2008, it managed $120 million.

“When we get up and start running again, I think the capital will be similar ($40 million),” he said.

A former second lieutenant in the Australian Army Reserve, Cameron said Komodo Capital would remain in Singapore but he would be running money from Australia using the same strategy as the KC Asia fund.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Standard Chartered has set up an onshore presence in Kenya for private banking and wants to grow that business in other parts of Africa, its head of private banking said on Wednesday.

“We have put some staff into Africa. Kenya is one,” Shayne Nelson, the CEO of StanChart’s (STAN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) private bank, told the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Singapore.

“We are looking to expand.”

Africa is increasingly viewed as a continent offering strong possibilities for future economic growth and wealth creation. According to the Boston Consulting Group, Middle East and African households had $4.5 trillion in investible assets in 2010, a rise of 8.6 percent from 2009.

StanChart currently services most of its African private banking clients from offices in London and Geneva.

StanChart is also gaining inflows from millionaires in Asian and other emerging markets as the region’s wealthy seek the safety of banks well placed to weather the current uncertainty, said Nelson.

“Standard Chartered always attracts deposits and assets under management in troubled times… If you look back to 2008, a lot of the big build we had came during that period,” he said.

GENEVA/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – (For other news from Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit, click here) 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/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, Oct 3 (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 realised 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 (Reuters) – A resolution to the problems engulfing Europe and its debt crisis will be found, Deutsche Bank’s DKBGn.DE co-CEO designate said on Thursday, though the road to finding an outcome is layered with risks and uncertainty.

“We are therefore positive that a resolution will be found, but there is real risk of an accident in the meantime, and the path will be uncertain and markets will remain volatile,” Anshu Jain, the German lender’s global head of the corporate and investment bank, said in prepared remarks at Deutsche Bank-sponsored conference in Singapore.

Jain, making his first speech since being named in July co-CEO from next year, said the euro’s problems were making investors more careful about lending to the region’s banks.

“There is a reluctance to fund, particularly the European banks,” he said, speaking at Deutsche Bank’s inaugural Women in Asian Business Conference.

Jain, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a checkered tie, noted that the financial industry is in the second phase of the crisis that began in 2008.

“It is clear that the authorities have done a tremendous job averting the risks of the Great Recession turning into the Great Depression. But this has come at a price. I believe we are now in the second phase of the crisis – as the pressure moves from the private to the public sector.”

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday warned that a widening of the European debt crisis could have severe consequences for German banks.

By Kevin Lim

(Reuters) – As the ranks of middle-class art buyers in wealthy Singapore grow, galleries representing artists such as Damien Hirst — best known for works featuring preserved animal corpses that cost millions — are aiming lower, taking advantage of an art-buying boom.

Around ten pieces by Hirst, all of them prints, will be offered for less than $8,000 along with thousands of other works of art at the Affordable Art Fair Singapore in November.

In line with the art showcase’s name, nothing will go for more than S$10,000 ($8,296) — an effort to lure budding art investors unable to afford the stratospheric prices commanded by pieces in more conventional auction rooms or art events.

Singapore, Asia’s private banking hub and home to more millionaires per 1,000 households than any other country, is also a regional base for many banks and multinationals.

A growing number of these relatively well-paid executives who may not be upper class have caught the art bug and are no longer content to just buy pretty paintings and sculptures to decorate their homes, but are seeking out specific themes.

“I like paintings, particularly with women as a subject. It can be mother and child, faces of women or nudes,” said Lou Dela Pena, a senior executive in an advertising firm in her late 30s.

SINGAPORE/BEIJING Sept 6 (Reuters) – Singapore’s finance minister said on Tuesday a global recession looked more likely than not and a Chinese official acknowledged China’s growth may slow to a 10-year low, highlighting Asia’s rising concern over its exposure to U.S. and European risks.

If Europe’s debt troubles deepen or the United States slips into another recession, Asia’s export-driven economies would be vulnerable through both trade and investment channels. Economists have already begun marking down growth forecasts while stocks have fallen across the region.

Japanese, Chinese and South Korean financial regulators discussed the global threats in a conference call on Tuesday, Japan’s financial services minister told a news conference.

“Asia will not be immune to a global slowdown,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s finance minister. “We are already at stall speed in the U.S. and Europe, which means we are now more likely than not to see a recession.”

Singapore, one of the world’s biggest trade hubs, is heavily exposed to global trade cycles and its economy contracted in the second quarter, compared with the prior three months. Some economists predict another contraction in the July-to-September period, which would fit the commonly used recession benchmark of back-to-back negative quarters.

Tharman’s prognosis was gloomier than those of most U.S. and European officials, who still see the global economy escaping another recession.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick, speaking in Singapore at the same conference as Tharman, said another recession was unlikely although the risks were high.