A Review of Asian Regulators

Starting off the new year, we may as well do a recap of last year’s events. To summarize the equities market saw glimmers of hope at last year’s dawn but the mood later relegated. The US stock market saw itself flash crashed in the second quarter and Eurozone has been stranded in quicksand. Fund houses and banks alike have started to find themselves confronted with more urgent regulatory demands.

The FT published an interesting viewpoint recently concluding that Asia may be pioneering financial regulatory developments and can set example for its European counterpart. In fact some of the industry professionals quoted go as far to observe that elements of Basel III might have drawn inspirations from Asian precedents.

It did point out that there were still some problems with the framework of regulation in Asia and Asia’s regulators are less coordinated and have limited reach beyond their borders to chase the non-compliant. 

In our view, the FT quote that acquiring a license in Hong Kong may take upwards of 12 months was off the mark and the processing time is much shorter than that.  Likewise the Hong Kong versus Singapore story is old news and the new rules for licensing of fund management companies widely expected to be introduced in Singapore in the first half of this year will level the playing field between the 2 cities even further.

The Financial Times article can be accessed here.