Singapore Banks

The Edge Singapore, in its May 9, 2016 edition, highlighted DBS Bank and also covered the other local banks in their Cover Story.

The feature covered DBS Bank and questioned if the worst was over?  For our local banks, the current main negatives are as follows:

1.   Exposure to offshore and marine sector.
2.   Declining commodity prices and possible exposure
3.   Rising NPLs (non-performing loans)
4.   Capital Requirements risk

Source:  The Edge Singapore (Bloomberg, Company Reports), May 9 2016

The views for DBS Bank seem to vary among research houses ranging from "underweight" to "buy". So, as you can see, even the experts have very different views.

My thoughts: On a more positive side, at least the banks pay decent dividends and long-term investors can take comfort in the fact that banks are still the most solid of all companies.  Accumulating the dividends over the years would pay off and at some stage in your life result in the shares bought becoming "free shares" over the long term.