From its birth in 1981 with just two employees, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation had become one of the world’s largest sovereign funds, managing more than $100 billion in assets, with 900 employees in eight offices around the world. It is larger even than Temasek Holdings, the government’s better-known fund. Temasek gained attention with its $1.9 billion purchase of a controlling stake in Thailand’s dominant telecommunications company from the family of the country’s prime minister. That helped stir street protests that led to a coup d’état (政变) there last year.
The stake was part of a broader expansion started in mid-2002 by the company’s executive director, Ho Ching, formerly head of government-owned Singapore Technologies and wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong. Aimed at reviving Temasek’s financial performance in the wake of a recession, Temasek has since taken large stakes in banks as distant as India, China and the Standard Chartered Bank of Britain. Temasek says its investments are purely for financial purposes despite its ownership by the government. Nonetheless, it has run into political headwinds (逆风) in the region. An Indonesian court recently ruled that it would have to sell one of the controlling stakes it holds, one directly and the other through a subsidiary, in the country’s two dominant cellular telephone companies.
Over the last few years, Singapore has embarked on an aggressive effort to court private banks and their clients as a way of diversifying the economy as manufacturing jobs were shifting to China and Vietnam, turning the country into an Asian asset base. There are already at least 40 private banks with offices in Singapore, managing assets worth at least $150 billion. With many wealthy Europeans shifting assets to Singapore from Switzerland to take advantage of rapid Asian growth and avoid new withholding taxes in Europe, the European authorities have stepped up criticism of Singapore’s banking system, saying that Singapore needed to tighten controls against money laundering.
Singaporean financial authorities say they do not condone money laundering and recently stepped up fines against banks found to be involved in illicit financial activity. The Government Investment Corporation, known as G.I.C., is controlled by the state, and Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, is its chairman. His son, the current prime minister, is deputy chairman. Tony Tan, its executive director, is a former deputy prime minister.
Both Temasek and G.I.C. have aggressively recruited top international financial talent, and G.I.C. in particular has a reputation among bankers and analysts as a shrewd and powerful investor. More than 40 percent of its employees are not Singaporean. Its investment panel includes Charles Ellis, chairman of the Yale University Investment Committee, and Robert Litterman, a managing director of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Despite managing public funds, G.I.C. does not publicize its holdings or returns. Last year on its 25th anniversary, Lee Kuan Yew offered the company’s first financial disclosure, reporting that G.I.C. had averaged a 9.5 percent annual return in United States dollar terms over its lifetime.
1. The passage mainly discusses about ______.
2. Form the first paragraph, it can be inferred that ______.
3. Which one of the following statements is TRUE of Temasek Holdings?
4. Many Europeans shift assets to Singapore due to the following reasons except ______.
5. The word “condone” most probably means ______.
