Is Credit Crunch already in Asia ?

[Cheekg98]

wow ... guess they have to hold on to them for a while .... sell on the next bull run ...

[Tploh]

didn't feel credit crunch in Asia, but definitely felt cash flow crunch, as petrol, agricultural ( e.g. rice ), commodity ( e.g. building materials ) have all gone up.

 

kind of different challenge, but end result quite similar - economy downturn.

 

those industries with high exposure to US will be even worse, e.g. semi-conductor.

 

hold on to your ride and cash

[Chongster]

from what i know the investment banks have cut a few, but not very senior staff. certain fix income desks have too. HK seems to have seen more cut than singapore though. ML is now a singapore bank, so that may have save the jobs here : )

 

actually with fannie and frannie gone, and LB not looking too viable at the moment, i worry about OUR ML, which is next in the line of fire...

 

if credit crunch simply means not being able to get credit or get credit at feasible price, then it doesn't seem to hit singapore yet. but margins have widen for a lot of regional bond issues. construction and property firms in china and companies in indon can apparently borrow only at high teens, even twenties. looks like crunch time to me.

 

also, wee cho yaw said this time round, its one of the most difficult environment he has seen. coming from the old fox himself, i would be worried. it's impossible for the real economy to be insulated from the banking sector, because the bank ultimately owns everything, your house, your car, your business, your property developer's land, your construction company's WIP, raw material etc.

[Chrispie]

Many traders and brokers are retrenched in wall street too. Many moving over to asian exchanges.

 

World largest market sneezes, all kena cold.

[Chongster]

on an international level, it's a big musical chair. a lot of the IBs house their regional ops in japan. it's getting ugly there. lots of CVs out there now... and everyone and their dog are trying to get into buy side.

 

asian markets are relatively small and immature compare to wall st and london, so i doubt we are able to swallow that many.

 

that said, a lot of banks, rather bankers, want to protect their friends and own kind, so there's some attempt at moving people abt internally rather than outright chopping them. but that's occuring at the relatively high level.