Behind the Scenes of the Ant Group IPO Sponsor List
28 August, 2020
Inside Temasek’s Response to Covid
9 September, 2020Euromoney, September 3 2020
In August, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that Standard Chartered would become the first significantly rooted foreign bank (SRFB) in the country.
The bank becomes the first to qualify as an SRFB, which gives it additional rights to establish places of business: it can now have 50 in the city state, of which 35 may be branches.
The terminology is fairly unremarkable to most of the world, but not to Australians, of whom there are many among the bank’s staff, for whom the term ‘rooted’ has quite a different meaning.
There has thus been great mirth at the MAS’s line that “the assessment of significant rootedness is made by MAS on the basis of a range of quantitative and qualitative attributes”.
It is heartening to know that, in the times of isolation brought about by lockdown, at least someone is being significantly rooted in Singapore.
