An avid collector of bonsai, Wee Ee Cheong has nine of the ornamental trees planted around the headquarters of United Overseas Bank (UOB), which overlooks Singapore’s Raffles Place business district and nearby picturesque heritage buildings. In much the same way, the deputy chairman and CEO has dedicated his career to extending UOB’s roots across Southeast Asia, growing its wholesale and consumer banking businesses, and, more recently, glitzing up its image to attract the younger generation.
A 50-year-old bonsai (Podocarpus macrophyllus) outside the lobby of UOB Plaza 1 in Raffles Place.
Founded as a merchant bank in 1935 by Ee Cheong’s grandfather, Wee Kheng Chiang, UOB has transformed itself from a single Singapore branch to a regional banking powerhouse with S$524 billion ($402 billion) in assets as of December 2023. Since succeeding his late father, Wee Cho Yaw, as CEO in 2007, Wee has kept up the energetic pace, stressing expansion is crucial with limited opportunities for growth in the small and crowded Singapore market. “If UOB today continues to be just a Singapore bank, we’ll be very vulnerable,” the 71-year-old says in an exclusive interview with Forbes Asia.
Photographs By Munster Cheong For Forbes Asia
After posting a record core net profit (which excludes extraordinary items) of S$6.1 billion for 2023 on total income of S$13.9 billion, the bank saw bottom-line growth flatten to S$3.1 billion in the first half of this year on S$7 billion in earnings. While Singapore contributed 57% to the total, 43% came from overseas—the bank’s goal is to change that mix to 54%-46% by 2026. “It’s not important for us to be number one in Singapore,” Wee says, adding, “We have the most comprehensive ASEAN footprint.”
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UOB was the official bank for superstar Taylor Swift’s sold-out concerts in Singapore.
UOB is the third-largest lender in Singapore by assets, trailing domestic rivals DBS Group and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. (OCBC), with S$739 billion and S$581 billion, respectively, as of end-2023. Listed in Singapore, the bank’s shares are up 12% year-to-date, closing at around S$32 in early October.
To cement UOB’s regional banking ambitions, Wee made his boldest Southeast Asia bet yet in 2022, spending S$4.9 billion to snap up Citibank’s consumer banking business in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, including its retail deposit and wealth management operations as well as its secured and unsecured lending portfolios. Wee says his late father, who spent his five-decade career at the bank stitching together deals across Southeast Asia—including the S$10 billion (about $5.5 billion at the time) acquisition of Singapore’s Overseas Union Bank in 2001—thought the move was “aggressive” but was supportive.........