OCBC welcomes more of the truly rich

THE sale of Barclays private bank business in Hong Kong and Singapore is done, months after talk started that the UK-based bank saw it as a non-core business.

Barclays has been shedding its Asian and other non-core sectors since 2014, in a reorganisation which saw it refocus on UK and US markets, a process which also saw thousands of people thrown out of work.

OCBC Bank on Thursday emerged the buyer of that private bank business after reports said only two parties were keen; the other being bigger rival DBS. A source at DBS said it did not regret losing because of the higher retention packages it might have to pay to retain Barclays' executives. An OCBC source said Barclays preferred its fully-owned Bank of Singapore over DBS because BOS is a pure private bank play.