DBS BANK ALIGNS BUSINESS ON NEW REGIONAL MODEL

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First Operating Move To Integrate Acquisitions In Hong Kong, The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia

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IMPROVMENTS IN OPERATING CONTROL, RISK MANAGEMENT, ECONOMIES OF SCALE, CLIENT SERVICE AND MARKETING CONSISTENCY ARE KEY BENEFITS AS BANK EXTENDS REACH INTO REGION

SINGAPORE, DEC. 8 - DBS Bank today took steps to further regionalise its banking operations in Asia, announcing a re-alignment of country and line of business responsibilities.

Ng Kee Choe, DBS President, said the moves were a natural follow-on to DBS's Nov. 9 announcement of the formation of a Regional Integration Center (RIC) to drive faster integration of DBS and its bank acquisitions in Hong Kong, The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

The overall objective of the RIC is to ensure the integration of existing subsidiaries is completed in 2000. But DBS today moved to put virtually all of its main businesses and functions on a regional footing.

DBS President Ng Kee Choe said that effective immediately, key subsidiary businesses and functions throughout the region will report directly to business and function heads in Singapore, with secondary reporting lines to subsidiary presidents or country heads. In most instances, DBS' Singapore business or function head will assume regional-wide responsibility for their respective business or function.

Units affected by this move include all subsidiary businesses and functions including Capital Markets, Treasury & Markets, Institutional Banking, Private Client Group, Individual Banking, Enterprise Banking, Risk Management, Information Technology, Audit, Human Resources, Finance & Planning, and Processing and Servicing.

The remaining major area of responsibility, Administration, will continue to report to respective subsidiary presidents or country heads.

Ng also announced that on integration-related matters, all DBS country heads will report directly to Chong Kie Cheong, who heads the RIC. Country Heads will, however, maintain a separate reporting line to their respective country board of directors. In an announcement earlier this week, DBS said it had appointed Bastari Irwan to drive integration from DBS' flagship operation in Singapore, with the oversight of the RIC

Ng said the re-alignment had several purposes.

"Key goals of this re-alignment are to ensure good management oversight of our activities throughout the region, contribute better operational control and risk management, and harmonise our practices and procedures throughout the firm.

"But at the same time, it will result in better service delivery to clients on both a local and regional basis, and provide economies of scale to DBS operations in the region. And importantly, it will allow DBS to more fully capitalise on the DBS brand and bring a single, consistent corporate identity to these markets as well.

"This change in the way we manage DBS activities in the region is timely and entirely consistent with our goal of becoming a world-class regional bank, and provides more clarity as we move forward.

"These changes and the market opportunities before us are not without their challenges. But we have prepared carefully for this move and are confident that our people, products and operations will meet the market test," Ng said.