A Tale of Two Cities 2022
We just got back from Singapore and we would like to share some key observations and our experience. Singapore was totally alive and very vibrant in the past 2 weeks, drawing many business visitors over a number of large international conferences like Forbes CEO conference, Super Return, Token 2049 and the F1 event. We saw many friends from Hong Kong in traditional finance, fintech and crypto industry - from CEOs to younger folks, feels like all were cramming to be there. Many HK and Asia-based startups were all congregated there - and the common thread seems to be that schedules were packed with meetings with investors, potential partners, professional services providers (even law firms are opening up Singapore office to get better SE Asia coverage). The amount of people I met last week was more than my last 3 months combined.
There were also a lot of social, corporate parties and drinks, mostly organized around the Marina Bay Sands area. It feels like there is a lot of pent up demand for the business/social activities, overflowing from Hong Kong and China. We also met a number of mainland Chinese and Hong Kong enterpreneurs that have made the move to be permanently based out in Singapore (starting as early from 1-2 years ago). The feedback is international schools is very difficult to get into, home rental prices also increased a lot. When I walk around malls like MBS and Ion Orchard, we do see shoppers (quite a contrast to Hong Kong, where there is so little retail activity).
On the Singapore government, a few friends have been looking at setting up a Singapore office for their businesses since beginning of 2022. They said that Singapore government and MAS have been very welcoming during the whole process - saying don't worry, settle down first and we can talk about the licences and other regulatory requirements later. On Singapore's leadership, I attended the Deputy PM Lawrence Wong's keynote at the Forbes CEO dinner last week. I was quite impressed with Lawrence's command and knowledge of the geopolitical situation globally and his likeability and clarity in communication. During the Q&A, someone asked him about Singapore being an ally of US, he actually cut that person off and said Singapore is not an ally of US, nor an ally of China, but Singapore is serving its own best interest.