Asia’s rich trim US exposure, head to Europe amid tariff turmoil

[SINGAPORE] Asian private banking clients sprang into action over the past month, refusing to sit idle when faced with the whiplash in global financial markets caused by the tariff turmoil. Individuals have been rebalancing their portfolios, according to some senior private bankers, whose clients each have at least S$2 million in investible assets.

Global financial markets have been see-sawing between gains and losses since “Liberation Day”, when US President Donald Trump slapped a broad range of tariffs on key trading partners on Apr 2, but have erased those losses following a truce between the US and China on May 12.

Even with Moody’s downgrade of the US credit rating a few days later, the MSCI World Index, which tracks 1,352 large and mid-cap stocks in 23 developed markets, has risen 3.8 per cent between Apr 2 and May 23.