Top India dealmakers earn 37% more than Singapore peers
[NEW DELHI] Senior dealmakers in India are earning more than their counterparts in Singapore and Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, as global firms boost pay to attract top talent in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Heads and directors at investment banks in the South Asian nation's major financial hubs, such as Mumbai and free trade zone GIFT city, are paid 24 per cent more than their peers in Hong Kong and 37 per cent higher than in Singapore, according to Bloomberg Intelligence's analysis of a survey by recruiter Michael Page.
For the year, India's bankers are set for pay rises of more than 9 per cent, compared with 4-5 per cent in the two Asian cities, Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Sarah Jane Mahmud wrote in a note on Tuesday (June 10). The report cited survey data from consulting firm Aon.
India is seeing a boost from a rebound in investments even as global trade uncertainties weigh on the country's broader outlook. Foreign lenders such as Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are continuing to expand in the South Asian nation, while Julius Baer Group is seeking to triple the wealth assets it manages, the Bloomberg Intelligence report said.
Investors have refocused on India's lower relative exposure to the US during the recent turbulence in global trade policy. M&A volumes have picked up and dealmakers say the country is well positioned to lure more overseas capital from private equity and sovereign wealth funds.
While India has higher income tax rates than Singapore and Hong Kong, its lower cost of living may be a draw, according to the report.
Pay for wealth managers in India, however, continued to lag behind that of Hong Kong and Singapore by 47-58 per cent, only a slight improvement from last year, the report showed. BLOOMBERG
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Straits Times
42 minutes ago
- Straits Times
How a Singaporean in the US is grappling with pricey Hainanese chicken rice under Trump's tariffs
Shelves at the local ShopRite grocery store. Spring season means more imported fresh fruit from Latin American markets at relatively cheap prices. PHOTO: GRACE NG Commentary How a Singaporean in the US is grappling with pricey Hainanese chicken rice under Trump's tariffs – There is one catastrophic scenario I worry about with US President Donald Trump's second term in office: bad food. I had read about the unimpressive cuisine associated with Mr Trump's establishments, from Thanksgiving platters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that resembled frozen TV dinners to gala dishes deemed worse than budget airline food by crypto investors in the President's meme coin. But I was not chuckling during a recent meal at a cafeteria in Pennsylvania, which served pale yellow turds. 'Eggs,' pronounced the server. As I stared in confusion, he whispered: 'Powdered eggs with some tofu. Good stuff – soybeans made in the USA .' This unpalatable swop of protein sources was accepted without controversy – possibly because I was attending an Asian church retreat, where tolerance for tofu and austerity is not in short supply. Expectations of egg substitution may also have been baked into consumers' expectations, since egg prices in the US have risen about 49 per cent in one year and could get nudged up further by tariffs on imports from markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. But it was also a sign that all of us, from the sheepish server to second-generation Asian-Americans and relative newcomers such as myself, have accepted that higher tariffs and wider price substitution are an unavoidable part of our foreseeable future. Price substitution, as I explained to my two little kids, inevitably takes place when the price of Hainanese chicken rice goes up by about US$3 (S$3.90) to US$15.99 on my food delivery app. So now, instead of that beloved Singaporean dish, we are ordering invented-in-America General Tso chicken with grown-in-America white rice for US$11.99, which increased in price by only $1. Alas, the only lesson learnt about economic trade-offs was this: saving US$4 was not worth the wailing and flailing that ensued. Taking stock of tariffs So we set off for the nearby Asian grocery store, which is the closest to a Sheng Siong supermarket I can find, to stock up on Prima Taste Fragrant Chicken Rice Paste for US$8.99 per packet. We were struck by the rows of unevenly empty shelves that reflect the tariff scenario analyses hoarders before me had undertaken. Hong Kong love letter rolls, Chengdu hotpot paste and Want Want rice crackers were wiped out. Apparently, they sold out soon after US tariffs on China goods reached as high as 145 per cent. But even after those rates were lowered to 10 per cent after a bilateral meeting in Geneva on May 12, restocking was slow. Empty shelves are seen as a woman shops for items at a Dollar Tree store on April 28 in Alhambra, California. PHOTO: AFP It was anyone's guess when they would get restocked, the store owner said in Cantonese. Some small businesses are still waiting for shipments, since larger US companies have rushed to stockpile goods to hedge against tariff volatility. The de minimis exemption for low-value imports from China had expired in May. Fortunately for my young kids, Khong Guan biscuits are fully stocked. That is not surprising, because tariffs of just 10 per cent were imposed on Singapore even before the Trump administration placed a 90-day pause – which expires on July 8 – on reciprocal tariffs, maintaining an interim baseline of 10 per cent on imports. We are also counting our blessings that most food prices have not returned to pandemic peaks. Bulk donations of baked ziti – using imported pasta and cheese – to the local food pantry, for example, still cost a third less than during supply chain snarls in 2021 . Delay, pre-empt or panic buy? Playground chit-chat among parents in our community has recently shifted away from whether to take the 'Wait till Eighth' pledge to hold off giving smartphones to our 'anxious generation' of kids until they are in eighth grade, or 14 years old. We now joke that tariffs of 25 per cent on Apple products might get the parents more eager to sign on, since they might have to wait until their kids are in the eighth grade for iPhones to become affordable again. There is also concern that new 50 per cent tariffs on metal could further hike the price of cars, home renovations, lawn tools and canned drinks. On June 4, tariffs on steel and aluminium imports were doubled to 50 per cent. This applies to nearly all trading partners, except the UK, which secured an exemption. The choice of whether to allocate more budget to pre-emptively stock up on canned beer or school supplies, both of which look likely to get more expensive, can be an agonising one for harried parents. A friend's garage sale: Nintendo and game consoles snapped up, while clothes remain. PHOTO: GRACE NG Coping mechanisms: Hacks and swops Many people wait until the 'back-to-school' sales tax holidays in August and spend an hour or two in stores hunting for, say, 18 highly specific items, from Crayola 12-count markers to composition books with marbled black covers – and some beer to tide them over the tedium. Until 2025 , I just paid a premium for pre-packaged school supply kits to save time and hassle. A few days ago, I experimented with adapting a writer's 'AI (artificial intelligence) Grocery Assistant'. Using Google AI chatbot Gemini and Google Shopping , it found the lowest prices for school supplies across retailers such as Walmart and Target, generated links and automatically added the items to shopping carts. The Gemini-generated shopping list saved me about US$12 compared with buying a kit. Not shabby at all for me, but not enough to buy certain toys. A Jurassic World Tyrannosaurus rex plastic toy increased to US$55 on May 21 from US$39.92 on April 27, according to photos circulated by Walmart workers about price hikes of as much as 38 per cent. The photos surfaced in my WhatsApp chat group with a few Singaporeans living in the US. 'Alamak, my boy just started watching Jurassic World cartoons,' moaned one of them. 'That means very soon he will want to buy every dino in the show! Should I start hunting for dinos at the garage sales first or on eBay?' With so much uncertainty around where tariffs will eventually land, most of our talk is just 'swop talk' rather than action plans. We are swopping notes with our families back in Singapore about how to deal with elevated costs of imported foods and how to buy quality second-hand items online without being scammed. Shelves at the Asian supermarket, with Khong Guan biscuits fully stocked. PHOTO: GRACE NG Christmas uncertainty: Naughty or nice prices? The art of price substitution can get one only so far, with limited visibility on where tariff levels will head to after July 8. It is simply impossible to budget for or plan too many purchases ahead. All the supermarkets in my area, from Walmart to Trader Joe's and German-owned discount chains, such as Lidl and Aldi, look fully stocked. But as a May 7 Bloomberg headline warned: Empty Store Shelves Might Be Coming Sooner Than You Think. One spectre is potential shortages of Halloween and Christmas products. The tariffs had earlier choked off production of those festive items in Chinese manufacturing hubs such as Yiwu, but the pause reportedly spurred a partial filling of US orders. But with some of these Chinese factories already diverting goods to European and African buyers, doubts remain about whether the procurement elves for Halloween costumes and Christmas toys can fully fulfil American wish lists in 2025 – and at what spooky price. Thankfully, my kids, who are Star Wars Lego aficionados , are still little enough to be content with makeshift outfits. After watching hacks shared by YouTube creators who specialise in Lego modifications, they 'customised' Star Wars-themed Lego mini-figures with acrylic markers, spare parts and capes made out of red balloons. That saved them the US$11.99 for a custom mini-figure sold on Party supplies at the family-owned Ollin Party Store in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California on April 16. PHOTO: AFP Reinvention to cope with change The ingenuity of the YouTube creators reminded me that the sanest response to unpredictable tariffs may be to train our energies not just on price substitution, but also on reinventing ways to meet immutable consumer priorities: cheap goods, speedy access, diverse choices and personalised offerings. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying: 'People always ask me what's going to change. But what's more important is what's not going to change. 'You can never imagine a world in which consumers don't want cheap prices, fast shipping and big selection. It's impossible to imagine a world where people don't want that. Because of that, you can put so much confidence into investing in those things, knowing they'll always be relevant in the future.' One can only hope that entrepreneurs, communities and families can leverage new ideas, tools and technologies fast enough to outpace price shocks. I am holding my breath on when the tariff turmoil will settle. But in a nod to what is unchanging – our love of Singaporean food – I will be learning how to make decent chicken rice and kaya with egg substitutes. Grace Ng is a Singaporean writer in New Jersey and a former Straits Times China correspondent. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
8 hours ago
- Straits Times
Qantas sheds Jetstar Asia to protect lead in core domestic Australian market
Qantas said its domestic profit margin was 17 per cent at its half-yearly results in February. PHOTO: ST FILE SYDNEY – National carrier Qantas promotes itself with the proudly patriotic slogan 'Spirit of Australia' – and its decision to close its Singapore-based subsidiary Jetstar Asia was widely seen as a shrewd move to return to the comfort of its highly profitable domestic market. Analysts saw the move as a bid to shift aircraft and capital from the competitive low-cost market in South-east Asia to the Australian market, where Qantas' only serious competitor is Virgin Australia. The Australian domestic market is particularly lucrative now that other rivals such as Rex and Bonza have struggled or collapsed, noted Professor Rico Merkert, an international transport expert from the University of Sydney. 'The Australian market is very profitable. Qantas was probably thinking about how it can benefit more from the high demand and quite nice yields at the moment.' Meanwhile, Qantas has reaped growing domestic profits as the airline and Virgin were both more 'disciplined' and abandoned their all-out war over capacity and prices, he told The Straits Times. 'Closing Jetstar Asia is a sensible decision that will help Jetstar to become more profitable,' he said. Jetstar is Qantas's low-cost domestic subsidiary. Qantas said its domestic profit margin was 17 per cent at its half-yearly results in February, compared with 8 per cent for international and freight. Its move is seen as an attempt to refocus on Australia, as Virgin Australia relists as a public company on June 24, five years after it was taken over by Bain Capital. Mr Ian Thomas, an aviation expert from Sydney-based CAPA Consulting, told ST that Qantas was 'tying off loose ends' as it faced potential increased competition from Virgin. 'Within Australia, Virgin's refloating has put some pressure on Qantas internally,' he said. Virgin Australia had a domestic market share of 35 per cent as at December 2024, compared with Qantas' 63.6 per cent (including Jetstar), according to a Feb 18 report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. 'Qantas has never really invested the amount of money it needed to establish (Jetstar Asia) on a viable basis. It really didn't have the fleet size,' Mr Thomas added. He said Qantas had been reluctant to properly invest in the competitive low-cost Asian market, which left (Jetstar Asia) struggling against bigger players such as Scoot, the low-cost arm of Singapore Airlines, which maintains a fleet of about 50 jets including high-capacity long-haul Boeing Dreamliners. In contrast, Jetstar Asia operates 13 medium-capacity single-aisle Airbus jets. Nine of these A320 jets are slated for Jetstar's for use in Australia and New Zealand, while four will be used on routes servicing mining workers in Western Australia. 'Qantas has fantastic demand domestically but not enough aircraft,' Professor Merkert noted. 'It is not easy to get new aircraft at the moment. The easiest way to do it is for Qantas to redeploy assets that it already has in the fleet.' Qantas said on June 11 the decision to shut down Jetstar Asia after July 31 stems from escalating supplier costs, airport fees and aviation charges in recent years amid intensifying competition and growing capacity, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic. Jetstar chief executive Stephanie Tully told reporters on June 11 that Jetstar Asia has only been profitable for six years in its two decades operating out of Singapore since 2004. The intra-Asia carrier was expecting to post an underlying loss of A$35 million (S$29.3 million) before interest and tax in the financial year ending June 30. 'Qantas has much bigger (profit) margins in Australia. It would have been more appropriate to use that capital in the Australian domestic market, which it is now proposing to do,' Professor Greg Bamber, an aviation specialist from Monash University, told ST. 'It was probably a mistake for Qantas to have invested in Jetstar Asia in the first place.' He said abandoning the carrier would enable Qantas to focus on reaping profits from routes serving the 'golden triangle' – the east-coast cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane where Australia's vast population is centred. These three cities offer massive demand for travel, but with no high-speed rail to connect them. The move by Qantas also signals a change of direction under group chief executive Vanessa Hudson, who was formerly chief financial officer. She took over in 2023, ending the 15-year reign of Alan Joyce. Mr Joyce was the head of Jetstar when it announced plans to launch Jetstar Asia in 2004. Jetstar Asia marked the first of Qantas's ventures aimed at low-cost travellers in Asia. The airline later launched Jetstar Pacific, operating in Vietnam, but later ended its involvement in the venture. It also launched Jetstar Japan, which some analysts viewed as a more successful model than Jetstar Asia because it involves a partnership with a local carrier, Japan Airlines. Despite the closure of Jetstar Asia, Jetstar will continue to fly from Australia into Asia, including to Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea. It is also looking to return flying to the Philippines after ending its connection there about a decade ago. Ms Hudson, unlike Mr Joyce, never headed Jetstar – and is clearly willing to shed non-performing legacy aspects of her predecessor's era. 'Alan Joyce cut his teeth in Jetstar and had an affinity with its operations,' Mr Thomas said. 'Vanessa Hudson, being the new broom, is going through their strengths and weaknesses. She is reviewing everything and has decided to draw a red pen through Jetstar Asia.' Jonathan Pearlman writes about Australia and the Pacific for The Straits Times. Based in Sydney, he explains matters on Australia and the Pacific to readers outside the Oceania region. Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
International Business Times
11 hours ago
- International Business Times
Asian Markets Edge Higher as Trade Talks Show Progress, Inflation Data in Focus
Asian markets edged up cautiously on Wednesday as investors were kept in check by some muted moves on the trade front. The latest meetings in London suggested a de-escalation of sorts as a consolation prize after a turbulent few months. Japan's Nikkei index added 0.4 % to the gains it made earlier in the month. Australian stocks added 0.4%, and MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan advanced 0.2% in early trade. It was a cautious but optimistic response from investors in the region to negotiators' assertions that they had settled on a "framework on trade" that they would bring back to their governments. The U.S. Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, also said the deal could entail removing restrictions on rare earth elements and magnets, but there were no clear details on that. Markets welcomed the news of continuing talks, but traders were skeptical that an agreement, if there was one, would be reached quickly or cover all the contentious issues involved. Among currencies, the dollar was down 0.1 % against the yen at 144.73. The euro inched up to $1.1433, and the U.S. dollar index was unchanged at 98.971. The action was sluggish and represented a "go nowhere" attitude in the market, particularly as it faced the upcoming U.S. inflation data. Bond investors were still alert, pushing the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield steady at 4.467%. The market was also eyeing a $39 billion sale of 10-year notes later in the day, a sale that would test international demand as worries grow about the U.S. fiscal stance. Investors have grown skittish about expanding deficits and erratic trade policy, and they have demanded a higher return on even long-term holdings. Wall Street, meanwhile, finished Tuesday on a high note as major indices rallied on hopes that the trade talks might lead to a positive outcome. Yet European futures were down a little. Futures on EUROSTOXX 50, FTSE, and DAX all fell 0.2%, and S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were down 0.1%. Attention will now shift to the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), due later in the day. Economists were expecting a 0.2% rise in headline CPI and a 0.3% uptick in core inflation for May. It's disappointing if inflation only proves decisively that the Fed is unlikely to be ready to cut rates anytime soon. Markets are now pricing in small odds for bill rates at the June and July meetings, but some 60% chance for a cut in September. In commodities, gold gained 0.3 % to $3,333 an ounce as investors flocked to safety ahead of inflation data. And oil prices pulled back from their most recent highs, with Brent crude losing 31 cents to $66.56 a barrel and U.S. crude easing 28 cents to $64.71.
