Page 259 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

Development Board flat. It was nicely done. The company was medium
sized and they wanted to expand. I shifted my family there, the next
month. The Singaporeans were very warm and co-operative. The city was
well organized, much more orderly and disciplined as compared to Hong
Kong. It had everything one liked as a good standard of living. City was
much more peaceful than Hong Kong due to its population being almost
half that of Hong Kong. There was a saying there that if one has five Cs,
life is good in Singapore: Five Cs being A Company of own or of others
to work, Condominium flat, Club membership, Credit card and Cash.

I acclimatized myself there very fast. Tried to grasp the nature of their
business, volumes, margins, their reserves, properties and bank dealings.
Got a grip quite fast. We had one CA from Chennai working at our
company. I tried to interact with him on financial matters but I found him
very reserved. He simply responded to official matters by acting upon
the instructions and passing entries on Tally Accounting Software, very
popular in Singapore at that time. May be he might have had
apprehension that after I had joined, he might be replaced. That was not
actually the case.

Onset of 2nd round of economic crisis in Singapore
Come April, the same year, there was a second round of financial crisis
in South East Asia. It was much more severe than the earlier one. Our
company also got affected along with other companies across Singapore.
Even though this was considered a strong company in that building and
in this line of activity, its business went down by 40% within a year. I saw
job losses across the board in Singapore and affected countries.

How did it all begin?
The Thai baht was the target of intense speculative attacks just before it
collapsed in July 1997. For a while, the Thai government managed to
defend the currency, which had been pegged to the United States (US)
dollar. However on 2 July 1997, it announced that it would no longer

256 | A Banker down the Rabbit Hole