LUNCH, who knew, can be a symbolic meal. It is a necessity to most people; but to "eat someone else's lunch" in the business world describes how the forces of creative destruction, aggressive competition and a superior business model will woo customers away from complacent incumbents.

So powerful was the analogy that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong attracted some controversy earlier this year when he said - in comments blown out of proportion by the Internet - that Singapore must not only protect its own lunch, but also "steal" other people's.

When the Singapore Exchange (SGX) took away brokers' lunch breaks in 2011 and as other exchanges lengthened trading hours to fight for flows, the message was clear: Ferocious global competition is here. With online trading compressing margins and other exchanges with deeper markets drawing investors away from Singapore, the business of local stocks was suffering a concerted whammy. Not helping were a spate of corporate governance scandals at China-based stocks in Singapore, and a penny stock crash in 2013, that destroyed confidence in the market.