Sunanda K Datta-Ray: The Calcutta connection

MONEY TALKS

The simplicity of banking is one of the joys of Singapore. True, the ubiquitous POSB is not too savvy about foreign exchange but it is candid enough to say so.

What never ceased to amaze me was that POSB stood for Post Office Savings Bank which made those bright air-conditioned interiors, with its smart and helpful young assistants, beautifully computerised pass books and gleaming ATM machines first cousins of the grubby banking counters in our own dingy post offices.

So attached did I become that I wanted to retain my account when I was leaving Singapore. But the young lady at my branch advised against it.

DBS, the Development Bank of Singapore, had taken over POSB and it might be less customer-friendly. "Suppose they decide on a $ 500 minimum balance?" she said. "You'll be far away, and might be penalised without even knowing it!" Reluctantly, I closed the account.

Now, DBS is coming to India, together with the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and United Overseas Bank (UOB), under the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will sign next week with his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong.

It's a major step, but by no means a pioneering one. Formal and informal financial links always bound India and Singapore, and it's only post-Independence autarky that makes the exchange seems novel.

The Jews and Armenians who flitted between Calcutta, Singapore and Shanghai "" Raffles Hotel's Sarkies brothers among them "" had no problems whisking round their fortunes.

Neither did the Chettiars with their hand notes. The Union Bank of Calcutta was Singapore's very first bank in 1840, 11 years after opening its doors in Calcutta as the chief presidency bank.

It was descended from the Bank of Bengal, set up in 1806 as the government bank, which occupied elegantly massive premises with three abutting wings.

A friend tells me it's now the Indian Museum. There is a resemblance but I seem to remember that Walter B Granville, the government architect, designed the museum after a Florentine palace.

The Union Bank was one of the first to issue currency notes here and in Singapore where, curiously, it printed 100 Spanish dollar notes. The bank failed in 1848.

A Singaporean colleague says that OCBC's nonagenarian president for life, Tan Chin Tuan, spent some time in India. What I do know is that UOB, which is also coming, and which took over the Overseas Union Bank four years ago, enshrines a Calcutta connection through the veteran Lien Ying Chow who died last August two years short of a century.

Thereby hangs the classic rags-to-riches tale of a penniless 14-year-old orphan who arrived in Singapore in 1920 and went on to create the Overseas Chinese Union Bank (OCUB).

Like many other Chinese, Lien fled to Chungking, Nationalist China's wartime capital, just before Singapore fell. Already the youngest elected president of Singapore's Chinese Chamber of Commerce, he knew that the Japanese would give him short shrift.

It was a hazardous journey to Perth, being tied to the mast for four hours every day to keep a lookout for Japanese submarines. Then it was Colombo and Calcutta, where Lien apparently had relatives in the Chinese community.

Who they were and how long he stayed is not known for the Calcutta Chinese were always very low key and have now virtually disappeared.

Nor was Lien anybody of consequence then. We do not know whether he stayed in Chinatown (around Bentinck Street) or Tangra, but he went on to Kunming, travelling in overcrowded cargo ships that had to dodge Japanese bombs.

Chungking was then a refuge for many overseas Chinese from Singapore and Malaya. The enterprising Lien, only 36 years old, encouraged them to get together and help him launch the OCUB in 1943 while the war still raged.

It was a modest business on the ground floor of a building whose second and third floors were the living quarters of Lien, his general manager and his wife.

When the war ended, the perspicacious Lien realised that a civil war was brewing in China and that his fledgling OCUB would be safer in British territory.

Hence the return to Singapore where it "" he had roped in a cinema magnate as well as Aw Boon Haw, the Tiger Balm King "" opened in February 1949 in Raffles Place as the OUB. It had a paid-up capital of $ 2 million and a staff of just 27.

Lien also founded the Mandarin Hotel, became one of the biggest property owners in Orchard Road (together with the Galadari brothers) and a pillar of the 109-year-old Ee Hoe Hean millionaire's club started by Hokkien towkays.

"If a member is 50", he said, "that's considered young."

One last banking connection. One of the several Indian banks in Singapore had a fraud on its hands. Fearing that its licence might be revoked, the managers quietly sent the erring employee home, swallowed their losses and suppressed the matter.

Later, when the chairman paid his annual visit to Singapore and called on the monetary authority, it very courteously gave him a folder with details of the case of which even he was unaware and the mild admonition, "If you'd taken us into confidence, we could have helped you to handle it."

Tailpiece: Visiting India 13 years ago, Lee Hsien Loong asked for copies of records of the period, 1819 to 1867, when Singapore was administered from Calcutta.

I wonder whether he has received them at last or will have to bring the matter up with Singh.