SINGAPORE (Oct 26): DBS Group Holdings, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and United Overseas Bank, arguably the most closely followed stocks within the finance sector, did not come out tops in any of the three metrics by which the Billion Dollar Club companies are measured. Instead, local bourse operator Singapore Exchange chalked up the highest return on equity (ROE) and pretax profit growth over the three years to 2015. It also had the second-highest stock return over the period, behind insurer Great Eastern Holdings. That easily gave SGX the highest overall score in the category.

Still, DBS and UOB managed relatively high scores in terms of stock return and pre-tax profit growth to be placed second and third overall, respectively. OCBC did better than its two local bank peers in terms of ROE, but trailed them on stock return and pre-tax profit growth. Its overall score was second from the bottom.

To be fair, the last three years have not been the best of times for the banks. Their net interest margins have been squeezed by low interest rates, loan growth has been soft, operating costs have been rising, and, recently, there have been more instances of loans turning bad. On top of that, as a linchpin of the economy, banks are heavily regulated and have to comply with increasingly tough capital and liquidity requirements. In fact, there is talk of the weights on risk assets being raised beyond the current Basel III standard. Among the assets that could see higher risk weights are a bank’s trading book, mortgage loans and uncommitted banking lines.

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