Bank Of Singapore To Have New CEO Next Year

Tom Burroughes

13 November 2014

The chief executive of Bank of Singapore, Renato de Guzman – or Bing, as he is known to many – is retiring from the post on 31 January next year, with senior BoS executive Bahren Shaari taking over the role.

The bank, which is part of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, said de Guzman will remain at BoS after he has left the CEO slot to hold the role of senior advisor until the end of June. This will be done to ensure a smooth transition, it said in a statement today. Shaari, meanwhile, is currently senior managing director and global marketing head of Southeast Asia.

The 52-year-old takes up the CEO slot at the start of February next year. Shaari, who has more than 25 years of banking experience, was part of the management team at IAPB that moved over to Bank of Singapore in January 2010. Prior to that, he was managing director of UBS Wealth Management, where he headed the South East Asia and Australia marketing team.

The move by de Guzman rounds out one of the most high-profile private banking careers in recent Asian history. He has been CEO since January 2010, having led the former ING Asia Private Bank for 10 years before it was acquired by OCBC Bank in that year.

“Under his leadership, he skilfully steered the renamed Bank of Singapore, rapidly expanding the regional management teams with highly qualified professionals and developing a leading product, research and advisory platform. Today, Bank of Singapore has more than sufficient scale to achieve sustainable growth,” the bank said.

It said its asets under management have doubled from $23 billion in January 2010, when Bank of Singapore was launched, and crossed the $51.1 billion mark as at 30 September this year. The firm said it has consistently logged double-digit revenue growth annually. Over the last four years, the ranks of front-line staff have almost doubled to over 300 private bankers.