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DBS Mulling Dubai Expansion to Scale up Middle East Presence, Says Piyush Gupta

DBS Bank’s CEO Piyush Gupta said that the financial firm is mulling expansion plans in Dubai, according to a Bloomberg report detailing his interview with Yousef Gamal El-Din at the Dubai Fintech Summit.

He added that the bank is “revisiting the thesis that there is real opportunity to do more stuff out of Dubai and this region”. DBS‘ presence in the Middle East is currently limited and the bank sees this as an “opportunity to scale it up”.

Gupta went on to remark that “hubs like Dubai can act as a neutral player in a multipolar world, being able to intermediate flows from the West and the East”.

DBS was recently slapped with an additional capital requirement by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) following two consecutive disruptions of its services in just over a month. The bank will now have to set aside approximately S$1.6 billion.

The bank had established a Special Board Committee following the day-long disruption on 29 March to oversee a full review of the bank’s technology resiliency with an independent external expert.