TWO former senior employees of UOB Kay Hian Private Limited (UOBKH) were charged on Wednesday for allegedly lying to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in relation to reports on a then Catalist aspirant. Lan Kang Ming, 38, and Wee Toon Lee, 34, each face three charges of providing MAS with false information in October 2018 in relation to due diligence reports on an unidentified company applying to list on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. MAS said in a media statement on Wednesday that it was performing an onsite inspection of UOBKH between June and August 2018, to assess the latter's controls, policies and procedures in relation to its role as an issue manager for Initial Public Offering (IPOs). During the examination, Lan and Wee were said to have provided different versions of a due diligence report relating to background checks on a company applying to be listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. UOBKH had acted as the issue manager
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By Suryani Omar, Novrida Manurung and Shamim Adam
19 July 2011
Asia’s rising domestic demand and strengthened financial systems have made the region more resilient to global shocks even as slowing U.S. growth and the European debt crisis pose threats, Malaysia’s central bank Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said.
Another global recession is unlikely and risks to growth probably won’t materialize, Zeti said in an interview in Jakarta late yesterday. The chance of an economic contraction is less in Asia, said Zeti, one of the region’s longest-serving governors who oversaw Malaysia’s monetary and currency responses to the Asian financial crisis more than a decade ago.
“Right now, yes, there are risks but we don’t envisage these risks to materialize,” Zeti said. “Many of us recognized after the 1990s how vulnerable we were, when we were so export- led. Many of us now have promoted domestic demand and this has become more significant. We have a better chance of dealing and managing those risks.”
Asia’s central banks have enacted the steepest increases in borrowing costs as the region led the global recovery from the 2009 recession, with China, India, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan raising rates in recent weeks. Still, Europe’s debt crisis and rising U.S. joblessness have threatened demand for exports from Asia and wiped more than $2 trillion off stocks worldwide since the beginning of May.
Malaysia’s central bank kept its overnight policy rate unchanged at 3 percent this month, after raising its benchmark four times since early March 2010. It cited “heightened uncertainties arising from global developments that have created higher downside risks to growth” and said it will assess carefully evolving economic conditions before deciding on further policy moves.
‘Normalized’ Rates
“We have what we called normalized our rates and we normalized the rate to the level where it is now, where it is still supportive of growth,” Zeti said. “At 3 percent, it still remains quite low and there is still strong credit demand and this means that it isn’t an inhibiting factor to growth. We have to make that careful assessment because we also saw the first half of this year, growth had slowed.”
Zeti was assistant governor responsible for economics, reserves management, money market and foreign-exchange operations at Malaysia’s central bank when Thailand devalued the baht in July 1997, setting off a plunge in regional currencies. She became acting governor in September 1998 after then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad ousted one of her predecessors, who disagreed with the premier’s plans to impose capital controls.
She continued to oversee Malaysia’s capital controls as deputy governor after a new chief was installed before taking the bank’s helm in May 2000. Among Asian economies tracked by Bloomberg, only Taiwan’s Perng Fai-Nan has been central bank governor longer.
Europe Crisis
Euro-area leaders will meet in Brussels on July 21 to discuss the financial stability of the region, with European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet reiterating opposition to any Greek debt restructuring. It will be the second summit in a month and follows the worsening of the crisis that last week pushed Italy to the attention of investors.
U.S. economic growth slowed to a 1.9 percent annual pace in the first quarter from 3.1 percent in the previous three months. Almost 14 million unemployed workers were available for the 3 million job openings in May, evidence of how weak the labor market remains two years after the recession ended, according to a Labor Department report and data compiled by Bloomberg. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June.
The recovery in advanced economies is unlikely to be “strong,” Zeti said, adding that policy-making will be complicated by the need to tackle inflation while ensuring there is sufficient growth to create jobs. Every country should look at its own conditions, she said.
Asia still relies on U.S. and European demand for its goods, even as Group of 20 nations push to rebalance the world economy so that global growth depends more on domestic consumption. Asian economies accounted for 35 percent of world exports in 2009, compared with 25 percent a decade earlier, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Developing Asian economies will expand 8.4 percent this year, compared with 2.2 percent in advanced nations, according to IMF forecasts.
“Asia will continue to do better than the West,” said Vishnu Varathan, an economist at Capital Economics Asia Pte in Singapore. “Even though China and India are navigating quite challenging policy maneuvers now, they will do it successfully and they will avoid a hard lending. That’s another key reason why we believe intra-regional demand will stay quite robust.”
Malaysia’s economy will probably expand 5 percent to 6 percent this year, with growth likely to be stronger in the second half as the impact of Japan’s natural disasters dissipates, Zeti said.
“We have to evaluate the conditions and going forward, we don’t want to have second-round effects that result in high inflation because that will erode purchasing power and that will eventually contribute to lower growth,” Zeti said. “It’s important to place priority on inflation because, unattended, it will result in damaging future growth prospects.”