Why S'pore is renewing focus on private markets

EARLIER this week, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) released the industry transformation map (ITM) for financial services, which aims to achieve annual growth in financial sector real value-added of 4.3 per cent and to create 4,000 additional jobs in the financial services and fintech sectors.

One of the key measures MAS announced under this ITM is to leverage its external fund management programme to anchor deeper asset management capabilities in Singapore. In order to position Singapore as the Asian centre for capital raising and enterprise financing, it will build private market funding platforms to enable growth companies to gain better access to capital.

To understand why MAS puts a renewed focus on the private markets, rather than simply reiterating the benefits of public listing, it may be useful to look at how companies access capital in more mature markets and how the roles of public and private markets have drastically evolved over the past 20 years.