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Singapore’s latest push to bolster its position as a global finance hub centres on creating an Asian version of BlackRock, the $14tn asset management juggernaut.
Many in the city-state believe that Singapore needs an investment manager with a global presence to match its status as an international finance centre.
The aim is for state-owned investor Temasek to transform its asset manager Seviora, which has maintained a low profile even in its home market since it was founded six years ago.
“They want to turn it into Singapore’s BlackRock,” said a person with knowledge of the state-owned investor’s strategy.
The asset management industry is dominated by US and European players, with the likes of BlackRock and the asset management arms of UBS and JPMorgan having developed large presences in Asia.
The region has a handful of big players such as China’s E Fund Management and China Asset Management, as well as Japan’s Asset Management One and the fund management arms of Mitsubishi UFJ and Nomura, but they are mostly focused on domestic markets.
People familiar with the strategy for Seviora said the plan was to rapidly increase its assets under management from S$96bn ($75bn) to make it one of the region’s biggest investment groups. Achieving that goal would involve positioning the business as a pan-Asian fund manager outside its domestic market of just 6mn potential customers.
“Our vision is to be a capital gateway between Asia and the rest of the world,” Seviora chief executive Gabriel Lim told the FT’s Future of Asset Management Asia conference in May.
“While [our] historical focus has been on deploying Asian capital into global markets, the new strategy emphasises attracting global institutional and retail capital into Asia-focused investment products,” he said.
The plan hinges on taking advantage of Asia’s rising middle classes and its increasing appetite for investment, as well as the region’s strong economic growth.
“Asia is no longer just where global capital invests,” said Kher Sheng Lee, Asia-Pacific co-head at the Alternative Investment Management Association. “It is the beating heart, pumping capital both ways.”
Temasek, in combination with Singapore’s larger sovereign wealth fund GIC and the central bank, accounts for about a fifth of the city-state’s budget and has allowed it to run a surplus for much of the past two decades. Their ability to generate returns will become increasingly important as Singapore’s population ages and becomes more reliant on the state.
Seviora was set up as the holding company for a handful of Temasek-owned investment businesses including Fullerton Fund Management. The brief was to help design products for the different businesses and assist with distribution and marketing.
At its inception Seviora oversaw just S$75bn of assets, although executives who joined at the time did so on the expectation that it would grow into a much more significant player.
Last summer, Temasek announced a restructuring that split the organisation into three business lines, setting Seviora up as the vehicle to turbocharge its asset management interests.
Lim was one of Singapore’s top civil servants before joining Temasek as joint head of corporate strategy in late 2024 and then being appointed to run Seviora last September. Some within Temasek think he is in line to take over when its chief executive Dilhan Pillay retires, underlining Seviora’s importance to the wider group.
Seviora is now part of Temasek’s Partnership Solutions group, which accounts for about a quarter of Temasek’s portfolio value. People familiar with the plans say it aims to strike joint ventures and make acquisitions across the region.
“Scale matters in asset management,” said Justin Tan, head of Asian financial services at LEK Consulting. “By offering a multi-investment platform, they are trying not just to have synergies across different units but also have distribution power that can help them attract investors and accumulate assets.”
However, he questions Seviora’s ability to turn disparate investment companies into a unified asset management behemoth.
“How much will they be able to make sure the subsidiary companies are greater than the sum of their parts?” Tan asked. “That’s the bit I’m not so sure about.”
There are already signs of the strategy being implemented. Last November, another Temasek investment business — Pavilion Capital — was brought into the Seviora stable and some analysts expect more to follow.
Seviora has also started to look beyond Singapore. It opened a Middle East office at the start of 2025 in Abu Dhabi and established a strategic partnership with the alternative asset management business of UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.
More recently, it has struck a similar deal with Doha Bank in Qatar. It has also forged a deal with Samsung’s investment arm, Samsung Securities, to sell more private equity funds to Korean investors.
At the FT event in May, Lim said negotiations were being held with several potential partners over launching joint products: “There is a desire by global investors to diversify into global portfolios or to pivot and deploy more into Asia. That is our opportunity.”
