Daily Briefing: OCBC's 4.5% salary hike extends losing streak to UOB and DBS; PM Lee refutes Singapore as post-Brexit model for UK

And US-based MassMutual Ventures opens its Singapore office.

From eFinancialCareers:

OCBC continued to lose to UOB and DBS in terms of salary hikes. Staff costs per head rose by 4.5% YoY to $2,793 for the first nine months of 2018, easily surpassing the inflation rate but still treading below the 10.4% increase for UOB employees.

"Staff costs per head at OCBC – total employee expenditure (such as salaries and bonuses) divided by total headcount – rose by 4.5% ($2,793) year on year to reach $65,514 for the first nine months of 2018. That’s above the rate of inflation in Singapore, but well below the 10.4% increase enjoyed by UOB employees, who took home $71,633 on average.

OCBC’s comparative parsimony may pose potential staff retention concerns if the firm continues to be outflanked on the salary front by both UOB and DBS."

Read more here.

From Deal Street Asia:

US-based MassMutual Ventures (MMV) opened its office in Singapore as it prepares for its debut in Southeast Asia with a target corpus of US$50m.

"The proposed Southeast Asia fund will focus on Series A and B investments in digital health, fintech, insurtech and enterprise software, an MMV statement said. MassMutual Ventures is the corporate venture arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. In addition to the new Southeast Asia fund, it manages a US$200m Boston based fund that invests in North America, Europe and Israel."

Read more here.

From Bloomberg:

Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong cited the UK and Singapore's "completely different" circumstances as to why the former cannot use the latter as a post-Brexit model as a model of a small nation that left a bigger union.

"The two countries also have 'completely different' histories and social welfare systems, Lee said in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the New Economy Forum in Singapore. He was responding to a question on whether London can be a 'Singapore on the Thames' after Brexit.

'You will have to find a different way to prosper having made the decision to leave the EU,' Lee said. 'Maybe, maybe if you look at Singapore, you might think you have some ideas that you can use, we hope so. But I don’t think you can take one society’s solution and just plonk it on a different society.'

Singapore was expelled from the Malayan Federation in 1965, two years after it was amalgamated into the newly independent country of Malaysia."

Read more here.