By CHEW XIANG AND SIOW LI SEN
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(SINGAPORE) The who's who of corporate Singapore, including three government ministers, were at the wake of DBS boss Richard Stanley yesterday.
Mr Stanley, who was 48, died from an infection on Saturday morning. He had been diagnosed with cancer of the blood and bone marrow in January though the leukaemia was believed to be in remission earlier last week after several rounds of treatment. But infection set in suddenly on Friday and he passed away the next day.
Hundreds of DBS staff, friends and family visited the wake at the Singapore Casket throughout the day, while wreaths and floral tributes filled the Regency Room and were stacked three deep in front of the building.
Among those who were there was labour chief Lim Swee Say, who back in November, had hit out publicly at DBS for retrenching 900 staff without consulting its union. Yesterday, he made the visit accompanied by DBS staff union members.
Speaking to reporters later, Mr Lim said that he had first met Mr Stanley when the latter visited him at his office a few days after the retrenchment was announced, for clear-the-air talks. 'We had a very frank and open talk. While we both exchanged a lot of views over the months, I think we recognised that it's not possible for us to turn back the clock, for DBS to undo the retrenchment.
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'Likewise it's not possible to turn back the clock for me as NTUC secretary-general to reissue my statement. But Rich and I, we agreed to move forward together,' Mr Lim said, adding that relations between union and management have improved greatly since then.
'Through a process of open communication, we were able to reach a strong and open mutual understanding very quickly; Rich started to reach out to the union . . . likewise the union invited Rich to our tripartite networking activities.'
Earlier in the afternoon, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Boon Heng also dropped by, while Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam made an appearance in the evening.
Mr Tharman said that he found Mr Stanley to be a very sincere person. During Budget feedback discussions, Mr Stanley represented the views of the banking industry and not any one bank, said Mr Tharman.
He also said that DBS does not need to rush to appoint a successor to Mr Stanley as the bank has in place chairman Koh Boon Hwee and its senior management team.
Others who went to pay their respects included SingTel chief executive Chua Sock Koong, OCBC chief executive David Conner, Standard Chartered Singapore CEO Lim Cheng Teck, and Ernest Wong, a member of Temasek Holdings's Advisory Panel and former United Overseas Bank president.
In addition to DBS chairman Koh Boon Hwee, several DBS directors were also there, including Kwa Chong Seng, Wong Ngit Liong, Euleen Goh and Bart Broadman. Also at the wake was former DBS chief operating officer Frank Wong, who left last August. 'He was a great man, very much loved,' Mr Wong told BT. 'He was a people-oriented person.'
Despite being just eight months in the job, Mr Stanley, who joined DBS on May 1 last year, saw the bank through a very testing period.
Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, DBS has had to deal with unhappy investors over the sale of the bank's High Notes investment products.
While the laying off of 900 staff at the height of the financial crisis happened on his watch, Mr. Stanley was also responsible for reorganising DBS's senior management and overseeing the rebuilding of the POSB brand.
There will be a funeral mass for Mr Stanley at Church of St Teresa at 2.45 pm today. DBS staff will observe a minute of silence at 2.45pm. The cortege will pass DBS's Shenton Way office en route from Singapore Casket to Church of St Teresa at around 1.50pm and staff will line the steps in front of the building to pay their last respects.
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