The Super Rich Are Choosing Singapore as the World’s Safest Haven

 Money is sloshing around Singapore like never before. Family offices, Bentley sales and real estate prices are booming.

For rich people “who can decide where they want to live and settle down, Singapore is a place of choice now,” said Stephan Repkow, who founded Wealth Management Alliance in 2015 after four years at Union Bancaire Privee. He said two of his foreign clients had become residents in the past 12 months and more are on the way.

Singapore has long been a draw for wealthy Chinese, Indonesians and Malaysians who would come for short trips to shop, play baccarat at the casino or get medical check-ups at world-class clinics. Mount Elizabeth Hospital Orchard, just steps from the flagship stores of Gucci and Rolex, features a UOB Privilege Banking Centre in the lobby.

The pandemic has changed all that, prompting many tycoons and their families to stay for months, in some cases seeking residency to ride out the storm. On a per capita basis, the mortality rates in Malaysia and Indonesia are more than 10 and 30 times higher than in Singapore, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of single family offices in the city-state has doubled since the end of 2019 to about 400, including firms recently set up by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Shu Ping, the billionaire behind Chinese hotpot empire Haidilao International Holding Ltd. Demand for private golf club memberships is soaring, real estate prices have jumped the most since 2018 and until the recent clampdown, Michelin-star restaurants were packed. Global banks like UBS Group AG meanwhile are expanding in the city to manage the massive influx of assets.

Seletar Aiport, the hub for private jets, has seen demand for hangar space soar during the pandemic, said Alan Chan, head of business development at the 67 Pall Mall wine club, who until November was an executive at Go-Jets.

One private jet pilot who declined to be identified said it’s still extremely difficult to snare a spot. While the recent strict travel rules have extended to people with their own aircraft, he added that most expect them to ease in line with commercial flights after a few weeks.

Singapore doesn’t divulge many details on its super-rich migrant residents, but private bankers, multi-family offices and other service providers say the new arrivals are helping their businesses, in a city famous as the setting for the “Crazy Rich Asians” film.

Harish Bahl, founder of Smile Group, a family office that focuses on tech investment, said he’s never met this many super rich in the city. He’s been working in the tech space for more than two decades.

“Since the pandemic, billionaires from all over the world have been staying on longer in Singapore, including those from China, Indonesia, India and the U.S.,” he said, citing incentives for setting up family offices.

All this visible display of wealth can cause resentment, according to Toby Carroll, who lectures on political economy at the City University of Hong Kong and previously worked at the National University of Singapore.

“The negative impact for the majority of people facing increased costs of living—including of housing—declining social mobility and rising inequality bodes poorly for social cohesion,” he said in an email. “The link between rising inequality and social instability is very real.” 

 

 Anonymous