“We were able to take advantage of the global financial shakeup to gain market share in areas such as equity and debt fundraising, lending and trade finance. We grew deposits and a healthy pipeline of mortgages in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan,” he said.
When Piyush Gupta joined DBS Group Holdings as its CEO in November 2009, DBS reported net earnings of $2.06 billion in FY2009 ended Dec 31, 2009, unchanged y-o-y. The bank’s ROE fell to 8.44% from 10.1%, while its total capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and common equity tier 1 (CET-1) ratio stood at 16.7% and 13.1%, respectively. The bank’s full-year dividend payout was just 56 cents.
Investors were still shell-shocked by the Global Financial Crisis then, and banks, as a whole, were not particularly popular investments. Gupta noted that the “team has done well” while pointing out that 2009 was a “tough year by any measure”.
