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Standard Chartered Equity in Asia Close Down: Wait for the news

My lazy work day was awoken when a fellow blogger informed me that Standard Charted will be exiting the intuitional cash equities, equity research  and equities capital market.

Channel News Asia have an announcement here.   This give you an idea how in tune with market news I am. I am really quite passive about it during working hours.

Obviously I am very disappointed if my SCB Online trading is impacted:

I actually really like the service.

The thing is, even their staff are rather shocked about this news. I think they are more anxious if this will affect their business unit more than anything.  The message is very vague but if SCB online trading is making use of the equity capital market, then this will affect the consumers as well.

What I felt after consulting some ex brokers and from call in is that it is likely MAS would arrange an orderly transfer to another custodian, which may or may not be your choosing.  The fear is whether there will be transfer charges and it will be catastrophic if there are. Already we are seeing from hardwarezone there are people selling out this morning and afternoon.

As far as we know, it is likely a transfer into CDP there will be a per counter charge and there shouldn’t be a charge levied at SCB Online trading end.

Lets not jump the gun. Lets wait until things becomes clearer.

Kyith

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Tan

Monday 16th of March 2015

Hi. Do u think that the online brokerage may jus shut down like what they did to their institutional business.

What if they did? Whats gg to happen to those shares under their custodian?

Kyith

Tuesday 17th of March 2015

Hi Tan, shares are held in a trustee account and MAS should do an orderly tranisition to another brokerage. That may or maynot be within our control.

RetailTrader

Saturday 10th of January 2015

On a bigger picture scale, this smacks of bad client management to me that erodes the trust of customers. FrankIy, I would start looking for new alternatives if I was using SCB.

Kyith

Saturday 10th of January 2015

Hi RetailTrader,

I do agree on the poor communication part. But there are no perfect platform. I heard from my friend that despite a reduction in the board lot to 100 shares, the traditional brokerages are still charging a minimum of 25 bucks. There is seldom something that is best in everything.

ken

Thursday 8th of January 2015

i just called the SCB Helpline, and they said the retail business isnt affected. SCB online trading isn't shutting down. That said, who knows?? Anything can happen in the end.

Matthias Kauer

Tuesday 13th of January 2015

thank you very much for sharing this Ken!

Kyith

Friday 9th of January 2015

Hi Ken thanks for checking. Let's see if there are more news. They should have sent a mail stating things are OK.

H

Thursday 8th of January 2015

i was a little concerned as well, until i noticed it mentioned "institutional" cash equities, equities capital market etc etc. on their official press release, so i placed a call - retail equities trading will not be affected.

it would be hard to believe SCB will want to cut their retail business, given that they are "spearheading" the no-min-commission discount trading model here which is well-loved by many.

hazarding a guess, it seems that SCB is leaning towards investment banking activities, (FICC trading & some capital markets advisory?) and perhaps looking to have everything retail to be put online (so less branches needed).

Boon

Thursday 8th of January 2015

https://www.sc.com/en/news-and-media/news/global/2015-01-08-taking-further-action-on-strategic-plan.html

The announcement mentioned quite clearly "institutional" a.k.a corporate and institutional. Not sure why everyone panic ;)

Cheers!

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