Banking Reform in Southeast Asia

“Neighbours First, Bankers Second”: Mobilising financial citizenship in Singapore

“…These mergers significantly increased the banks' deposit bases, which were deemed vital to promoting extra-territorial competitiveness. The enlarged banks were also supposed to expand their non-deposit taking businesses, transforming their business models from traditional banking services to more complex financial institutions offering an extensive and sophisticated array of financial products and services to an expanded customer base in regional and global markets (Cook, 2008).…”

State Intervention, Globalization and the Evolution of Malaysian Banks' Identities

“…There are five important studies on the development of local commercial banks in Malaysia with emphasis on history, development, ownership and state intervention (Cheah 2011;Chen 2013;Cook 2008;Hara 1991;Tan 1953). Tan (1953) provides detailed historical records of the establishment and activities of the first Chinese banks in Malaya and Singapore in the early years of the twentieth century.…”

Finance and long‐term development issues in Southeast Asia

“…After World War II, foreign bank dominance, chiefly associated with pre‐war exchange banks, largely, and sometimes almost entirely, gave way to a similar monopolistic structure of banks owned and run by nationals of the various Southeast Asian countries. The post‐war process of nationalism and indigenisation overseen by Southeast Asian states—a statist–nationalist policy agenda to adopt the terminology of Malcolm Cook (2008)—had, in predating a reassertion of the pre‐World War II trend to globalisation, the historical advantage of a big head start. In 1959, only seven US banks operated abroad, and these had less than 100 branch offices world‐wide (Walter 1988:10).…”

“…Banking in Southeast Asia is considerably less globalised than it was before 1940. Determined and effective states like Malaysia and Singapore can, it seems, at least in the medium term and to some extent, successfully resist a loss of financial and economic control to globalisation (Cook 2008:121–32). Malaysia effectively controlled capital flows.…”

“…In Indonesia, an open capital account enabled foreigners and Indonesians rapidly to withdraw funds. During and in the early aftermath of the crisis, in Indonesia and Thailand, the market, not mediated through an effective state, gained ascendancy (Cook 2008:31–68). The structure of banking, reversing the post‐war trend to state ownership, changed significantly because foreign, multinational banks gained greater traction.…”