Singapore's Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) said Thursday its fourth quarter net profit fell 16 percent from a year ago in the absence of one-time gains and higher expenses offsetting strong revenues. Net profit was S$428 million compared with S$510 million a year ago when it was bloated by divestment gains. Revenue totalled S$1.08 billion, up 19 percent from the same period last year, the bank said...
Finance
DBS Group, Southeast Asia's biggest bank, said on Friday its fourth quarter net profit fell 18 percent from the previous year as it set aside heavy provisions to cover its exposure to risky US mortgages. Net profit for the three months to December 2007 came in at S$491 million (US$347.15 million), down from S$596 million in the same period in 2006, the bank said in a statement. DBS set aside an...
With global interest rates trending downwards, some Singapore homeowners are hoping to see a similar move in mortgage rates. This is especially after the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR) hit its lowest level in almost four years in late December - at 1.5 percent. However, some analysts have said that the banks may not be willing to lower rates, in light of the current volatility in global...
With rising inflation and escalating asset prices, prospective homebuyers should take advantage of relatively low interest rates to finance their purchases, according to UOB’s head of loans Kevin Lam.Mr Lam said the economy had developed into a “negative interest-rate situation”, where asset prices rise very quickly while interest rates remained low.“With interest rates at 3 to 4 per cent,...
High price of DBSS flats mean buyers may have to spend a significant portion of their lives paying off loans THE recent launch of City View @ Boon Keng and the identification by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) of three more sites in Simei, Toa Payoh and Bedok for such developments has taken the price of public housing to a new level. When compared to other private properties in the area, it seems...
A consumer finance company in Japan recently started offering lower mortgage interest rates to “intelligent” customers. One might wonder if banks here have missed a trick, given the premium that society here places on “intelligence”. GE Consumer Finance Company, a subsidiary of an American industrial and financial conglomerate, is giving discounts to people who have good English or computer...
You think you know the bank interest rate you are paying when you take out a home loan — but a year or so later, you discover to your shock that it has ballooned, and you should have read the fine print more closely. Such scenarios, which were at the heart of numerous gripes from Today readers last year, should be a thing of the past, when new guidelines by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS)...
Being an Australian expatriate living and working in Singapore for the past 10 years, I have found myself in a position where the rental on my current condo unit will be increased from $1,900 a month to $3,500. Most of us know that paying this much in rental is nothing short of pointless and a complete waste of hard-earned money. So, like almost all of my expatriate friends, I have decided to buy rather...
With the property market booming and financing getting cheaper, Standard Chartered Bank is moving aggressively in Singapore’s mortgage space. Over the past week alone, the foreign lender has launched two home loans pegged to interest rates that are publicly available. Stanchart’s latest offer, announced yesterday, is a mortgage tied to the three-month Singapore dollar swap offer rate (SOR), which...