Tag Archives: Singaporean core

CCS seems to be hinting now that the Singaporean core does not mean being Singaporeans only! In other words, it's ok for non-Singaporeans to be included in our Singaporean core. What is he talking about? I recalled the term "Singaporean core" first came up in a Parliamentary debate in early 2013 when it was revealed that DPM Tharman and then Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin had met up with senior management staff in the banking industry. They were telling the bank management to make more efforts to develop a Singaporean core in their banks. The meetings with the bank management came about because there had been unhealthy foreign enclaves emerging and job discrimination against our own Singaporeans in the banking industry.

Speaking at a Semi-Centennial Leadership Conference organized yesterday, prominent businessman Ho Kwong Ping says that Singapore will need to do away with its "us-versus-them" mentality towards foreigners if it wants to stay relevant to the world.

The predilection among many foreign and some local banks for foreign PMETs is personified in this statement by the former CEO of Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, Mr Ray Ferguson: "If you look at it from our point of view itself, we would not have been able to grow to be where we are if we had said that we got to have a Singaporean-only focus (in hiring) for the last 20 years." So as a reflection of that, it is not surprising that out of the three local banks here, two have foreigner CEOs. And Standard Chartered Bank which recently locally incorporated its Consumer Banking arm has again hired a foreign Indian national to replace Ray Ferguson who has gone on to join Arab Bank in Bahrain.