SHOWS: SINGAPORE (JANUARY 3, 2014) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

LIM SAY BOON, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, DBS PRIVATE BANK

1. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Do you expect the Fed to finish tapering by the end of 2014?'

2. LIM SAY BOON SAYING:

'Well, that certainly is the Federal Reserve's intention if you look at Ben Bernanke's comments. His comments were that the intention was to complete the tapering of quantitative easing by the end of the year. And the logic of course is that there are eight FOMC sort of meetings between now and the end of the year. We have got seventy five billion dollars per month now left on the QE program. If you cut ten billion at each of the next eight FOMCs, that will bring you to zero by the end of the year. But I think whether it's exactly completed by the end of the year really does not really matter. I mean if the data is a little bit weaker, they might skip one or two, which means that the completion of the tapering of QE might be completed by January or February of 2015. But look, essentially it's either the end of the year or very early 2015. That's essentially the program. But I think based on the trajectory of the economic data, we should be pretty much done by December.'

3. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Do you expect emerging markets equities to be volatile as tapering progresses?'

4. LIM SAY BOON SAYING:

'Well, my concerns are that emerging market stocks, emerging market currencies -- particularly those emerging market economies with shortfalls in the current account which cannot meet their own funding requirements internally, domestically -- my concern is that as tapering progresses and U.S. dollar funding costs go up, there could be accelerating fund outflows again from these economies, economies like Indonesia and India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey. I think that's going to be a source of some volatility through the course of the year, which is why we are neutral weight on emerging market equities whilst we are overweight on developed markets for this year.'

5. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Which markets are you most bullish on in Asia?'

6. LIM SAY BOON SAYING:

'Well, we continue our differentiation theme from the second half of last year. Our differentiation theme was that we would favor those emerging market economies with stronger economic fundamentals, those which run surpluses on the current account, not shortfalls on the current account. By extension the current account surplus economies should do better, those are the economies and markets of North Asia -- China, Taiwan, North Korea. Southeast Asia likely to be Singapore, which runs a huge current account surplus, to some extent Malaysia, which also runs current account surplus. So these are the economies, these are the markets that are likely to be more resilient.'