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By Jamie [email protected]@JamieLeeBT
Singapore
WITH more than half of self-made bil-
lionaires in Asia being female, UBS is
aiming to crack that potential of
wealth by focusing on what women
want in this part of the world.
For what they want includes sus-
tainable investments that can make
them just as much money as invest-
ments that avoid such purposeful
considerations, said Tracey Woon,
vice-chairman for UBS wealth manage-
ment in Asia.
“Women are going to be a big part
of wealth management,” said Ms
Woon in an interview with The Busi-
ness Times. “So how can we change
wealth management for women?”
The global wealth of women is ex-
pected by UBS to grow from US$13
trillion to US$18 trillion by 2021. Ms
Woon pointed out that the proportion
of self-made female billionaires in
Asia, with most from China and Hong
Kong, far exceeds the numbers in the
West. In the US, the number is below
20 per cent; in Europe, that drops to
less than 10 per cent, showed UBS’s
2015 Billionaires Report.
To be sure, the smaller proportion
of self-made female billionaires in the
West may also reflect that wealthy wo-
men in those older economies have in-
stead inherited their wealth, Ms Woon
observed. But all in, the female billion-
aire population in Asia has also
grown faster than their male billion-
aire peers at 6.6 times, compared to a
factor of 5.2 times for men.
At the same time, Asia’s first
large-scale transfer of billionaire
wealth is soon on its way amid the big
surge in wealth in this region, and
against this, a significant number of
female billionaires are already driv-
ing their families’ businesses. Just
about 60 per cent of female billion-
aires in the West are deemed “active
wealth creators”, compared to an
overwhelming 96 per cent in Asia.
Ms Woon, who has worked in a
male-dominated industry for most of
her career as an investment banker at
Citi before joining UBS, is eager to not
just mentor women in her office, but
also engage the female clients who
are keen on investing based on a big-
ger, broader worldview.
Her own interactions with female
clients suggest that women are in-
deed thinking about holistic life goals
by doing good in the world, and at the
same time, helping other women and
improving the workplace for other women.
UBS is hosting a client event this
week to discuss aspects of philan-
thropy and female empowerment.
At an earlier philanthropic forum
organised by UBS, Ms Woon herself
was surprised by the strong interest in impact investing – an investment
concept that blends investment with
considerations of social impact. The
ground sentiment fits data from UBS
that suggests female investors could
be investing US$2.3 trillion in improv-
ing social good by 2021.“I was blown away by the speakers
and just with about how much the world is thinking abut impact invest-ing,” said Ms Woon, who joined UBS’s wealth management division late last year. “The target is to broaden our dia-logue when we talk to women.”
Global “impact assets” were roughly estimated at US$77.4 billion as at 2015, according to data from the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a global non-profit organisa-tion. To be clear, there remain argu-ments about the true definition of im-pact investing, as social investments can be loosely based on environ-mental, social or governance factors.
But GIIN said most investors sur-veyed by it in 2016 pursued competit-ive, market-rate returns. A poll of in-vestors also showed portfolio per-formance had overwhelmingly met or exceeded investor expectations for both social and environmental im-pact, as well as financial return.
Ms Woon suggested the same,
pointing out that investors can ex-
pect similar returns from impact in-
vesting as they do from typical invest-
ments. “Doing good doesn’t mean
you can’t make money,” she added.
Financial institutions are looking
to meet demand from impact invest-
ing, with asset management firms
such as BlackRock launching divi-
sions focused on impact funds.
UBS itself in 2016 closed an onco-
logy impact fund that raised a record
US$471 million. The investments
have been channelled to early-stage
oncology to accelerate the develop-
ment of new cures. The fund was de-
signed such that part of the perform-
ance fees and a certain royalty will be
used to improve access to cancer care
for children and their families in de-
veloping markets.
Jakarta, Manchester
INDONESIAN police said on Wednes-day that a suspected suicide bomber and a police officer were killed in explosions near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, Jakarta.
“There were two blasts at around 9pm (1400 GMT), close to each other,” East Jakarta police chief Andry Wibowo told TV station MetroTV. “From the damage I can see the explo-sions were pretty big,” referring to the Kampung Melayu terminal, which is served by mini-vans and buses.
TV pictures showed smoke rising from the terminal and police rushing to carry casualties away from the scene. Large numbers of police of-ficers were at the scene and had cordoned it off.
An eyewitness, Sultan Muhammad Firdaus, told TV station Kompas TV he heard two explosions about 10 minutes apart.
“The explosions were quite loud, I could hear them clearly,” he said. He added he thought two police officers were injured in the blast.
Indonesia, the world’s most popu-lous Muslim-majority country, has long struggled with Islamic militancy, and hundreds of radicals from the South-east Asian state have flocked to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), sparking fears that weakened extremist outfits could get a new lease of life.
Meanwhile in Manchester, a sui-cide bomber who killed 22 people at a concert venue packed with children had recently returned from Libya, Britain’s interior minister said, and her French counterpart said he had links with ISIS and had probably vis-ited Syria too.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Salman Abedi had likely not acted alone, and troops were being de-ployed to key sites across Britain to
help prevent further attacks after the official threat level was raised to “cri-tical”.
The police say they are investigat-ing a network in their probe into the attack. “I think it’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigat-ing,” Chief Constable Ian Hopkins told reporters. There’s extensive in-vestigations going on and activity taking place across Greater Manchester as we speak.”
Police made three new arrests in South Manchester on Wednesday in connection with the concert bomb-ing. They provided no details on the individuals held. Ms Rudd said up to 3,800 soldiers could be deployed on Britain’s streets, taking on guard du-ties at places such as Buckingham Palace and Downing Street to free up police to focus on patrols and invest-igation. An initial deployment of 984 had been ordered, initially in London, then elsewhere.
The Changing of the Guard cere-mony at Buckingham Palace, a draw for tourists, was cancelled because it requires support from police officers, which the authorities decided was
not a good use of police resources given the threat level.
Ms Rudd also scolded US officials for leaking details about the investiga-tion into the Manchester attack be-fore the British authorities were pre-pared to go public.
British-born Abedi, 22, blew him-self up on Monday night at the Manchester Arena indoor venue at the end of a concert by US pop singer Ariana Grande, attended by thou-sands of children and teenagers. His 22 victims included an eight-year-old girl, several teenage girls, a 28-year-old man and a Polish couple who had come to pick up their daughters.
Greater Manchester Police said they were now confident they knew the identity of all the people who lost their lives and had made contact with all the families. They said they would formally name the victims after forensic post-mortems, which would take four or five days.
The bombing also left 64 people wounded, of whom 20 were receiving critical care for highly traumatic inju-ries to major organs and to limbs, a health official said.
“It seems likely, possible, that he (Abedi) wasn’t doing this on his own,” Ms Rudd said on BBC radio. She said Abedi had been known to security services before the bombing.
The BBC reported that the security services thought Abedi may have been a “mule” for a bomb made by someone else, because they thought the device was too sophisticated for him to have put together by himself.
Asked about reports that Abedi had recently returned from Libya, Ms Rudd said she believed that had now been confirmed. French Interior Min-ister Gerard Collomb said British in-vestigators had told the French au-thorities Abedi had probably trav-elled to Syria as well.
“Today we only know what British investigators have told us – someone of British nationality, of Libyan origin, who suddenly after a trip to Libya, then probably to Syria, be-comes radicalised and decides to carry out this attack,” Mr Collomb told BFMTV.
Asked if he believed Abedi had the support of a network, Mr Collomb said: “That is not known yet, but per-haps. In any case, (he had) links with Daesh (ISIS) that are proven.” ISIS, now being driven from territories in Syria and Iraq by Western-backed armed forces, claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, but there were contradictions in its accounts of the action and a telling lack of detail.
Prime Minister Theresa May an-nounced late on Tuesday that the official threat level had been raised to its highest level for the first time in a decade, meaning an attack could be imminent. The UK Independence Party was the first party to announce it would resume campaigning.
Abedi was born in Manchester in 1994 to parents of Libyan origin, ac-cording to US sources citing British contacts. REUTERS, AFP
By Lee [email protected]@LeeMeixianBT
Singapore
FORMING the right policies around a piece of infrastructure is as important as actually building it, Finance Minis-ter Heng Swee Keat said on Wednes-day.
He made this point at the Global In-frastructure Initiative, a meeting of leaders in infrastructure and capital projects, when he was asked how Singapore undertakes its long-term urban planning.
Speaking at the dinner and key-note discussion of the meeting, he said the first generation of Singapore leaders from the late prime minister Lee Kuan Yew all took a long-term view on the development of infra-structure.
He cited the example of Jurong In-dustrial Estate, which was built in the 1960s. When it was completed but not yet occupied, the Western media mocked it, calling it “a great piece of wasteland” and “Goh’s Folly”, in a ref-erence to then Second Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee.
Mr Heng, who also co-chairs the Committee on the Future Economy, said: “Indeed, if you looked at it as a piece of infrastructure, at that time, we had a lot of industrial unrest. Workers were not well-educated; en-trepreneurship was not very strong. Building an industrial estate seemed like a really silly idea. “But what is
needed for the infrastructure to serve its purpose? It’s the whole slew of other policies that you need in order to support it. So, for instance, tack-ling the problem of unions, tackling the problem of industrial relations. It took time to build up tripartite rela-tions, which allowed workers to be properly trained and properly treated and to get fair wages.
“A whole change in the education system (was needed) to make sure that we had the skills for all these jobs that were coming in, and, of course, the creation of entities like the Eco-nomic Development Board that went about attracting investments...
"You need to be very careful about it. It’s not just about a piece of infra-structure, but how do you make that piece of infrastructure work?”
He offered a more recent example – that it was the government’s realisa-tion of the rising importance of re-search and development that gave rise to the creation of the one-north district near the universities.
The minister added that, in 2022, the first phase of the Jurong Innova-tion District is expected to be ready, describing it as “another experiment” in co-locating production, research and the prototyping of new technolo-gies in one place.
“It is a process of looking at pos-sible trends, but being humble that we won’t know the future ... but being prepared for the future and preparing the facilities and creating the struc-
ture that best allows us to make the
necessary changes,” he said.
Drawing on his stint as Education
Minister, Mr Heng spoke about the
need for education to complete the
ecosystem by keeping track with in-
dustry’s needs.
Singapore has always placed a
huge emphasis on Science, Techno-
logy, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) subjects; in fact, in the poly-
technics and universities today,
about half the subjects offered are
STEM-related, because these funda-
mentals give a good grounding to stu-
dents’ education, he said.
That said, Singapore is also mov-
ing towards lifelong learning through
the SkillsFuture Credit scheme, which
encourages the people to sharpen
and widen their skill sets through
courses paid for using the credits in
their accounts. “The value is not just
in the account per se; it’s the em-
phasis we place on lifelong learning,”
he said.
The three-day Global Infrastruc-
ture Initiative is organised by McKin-
sey & Company. This is its fourth edi-
tion.
By Wong Shiying
THE use of local infrastructure cur-rency bonds for the financing of greenfield projects in South-east Asia just got a leg up.
This has come about through a tie-up, the first of its kind in the re-gion, between infrastructure consult-ing firm Surbana Jurong and cur-rency-swap facility Credit Guarantee & Investment Facility (CGIF); the agree-ment was inked on Wednesday at the Global Infrastructure Initiative, a meeting of leaders in infrastructure and capital projects.
The tie-up aims to attract in-vestors to make investments in green-field projects using local currency bonds by marrying the engineering capabilities of Surbana Jurong with the financial strength of CGIF as a guarantor.
Surbana Jurong, the merged entity of Surbana International Consultants and Jurong International Holdings, is one of Asia’s largest consultancies for urbanisation projects.
CGIF, an initiative of the 10 Asean states along with China, Japan and Korea (a grouping called Asean+3) and the Asian Development Bank, provides guarantees on local cur-rency-denominated bonds issued by companies in the region.
Such guarantees make it easier for firms to issue local bonds with longer maturities. They also reduce the “double-mismatch” problem in the fin-ancing of investments – that of a mis-match in currency and a mismatch in tenor.
The collaboration between Surb-ana and CGIF is significant for two reasons: One is that the partnership comes just when greenfield infra-structure projects lack funding; the second reason is that it gives a boost to local-currency financing, which is preferred over that by foreign curren-cies because it mitigates the risk of conversion losses.
CGIF will offer up to US$140 mil-lion of unconditional guarantees per greenfield project screened by Surb-ana Jurong for construction-related risks.
Kiyoshi Nishimura, chief executive of CGIF, said: “Many Asean countries are witnessing rapid accumulation of domestic savings as their economies grow and income levels rise. How-ever, these savings are not well tapped to finance critically needed in-frastructural assets. Catalysing insti-tutional investors’ support for infra-structural projects [will help] to nar-row the widening infrastructural gap in the region.”
Surbana Jurong group chief execut-ive Wong Heang Fine said: “This col-laboration taps both partners’ strengths and should go some way to mitigate risks for investors. It thus bridges the gap between good infra-structural projects and long-term in-vestors, who have the funds but may not have the risk appetite without such guarantees.”
He added that this tie-up with CGIF would enable Surbana to offer a new dimension of financing solutions for its infrastructural project pipeline.
“I look forward to embarking on our first infrastructure project bond together.”
2 killed in Jakarta blasts; Manchester bomber had links to ISIS Surbana, CGIF team up to boost local-currency financing for projects
UBS seeks broader dialogue with women wealth clients
People lay flowers at St Ann’s Square, after relocating them from Albert Square, in Manchester, in tribute to victims of Monday’s terror attack at the Manchester Arena. In Jakarta, TV pictures showed smoke rising from two blasts..PHOTO: AFP
Policy formation is as important as building infrastructure: Heng
Mr Heng in a discussion moderated by Rik Kirkland (left), partner and director of publishing at McKinsey & Company, which organised the Global Infrastructure Initiative (GII) summit being held on Sentosa. PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN/ THE STRAITS TIMES
It says women will be a big part of wealth management as they make up over half of self-made billionaires in Asia
He cites instances when Singapore has crafted policies and set up agencies so that infrastructure can work
2 | TOP STORIESThe Business Times | Thursday, May 25, 2017
