Singapore’s place in modern history is one of the important financial centres of the world, alongside London, and New York. To be sure, there are a clutch of Asian contenders, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and more recently, Shanghai and Shenzhen. But all these other Asian financial centres serve a more specialised function. For example, they serve the domestic Japanese or Chinese market, act as a gateway to China, etc. Singapore remains a leading global financial centre in Asia, especially for offshore financing. As a result, commercial banks also dominate the Singapore stock market, in terms of market capitalization, as well as influence on the overall economy. An investor is not likely to miss having Singapore bank shares in his/her investment portfolio. And this, naturally brings us to the question of: how do we value a bank? The most straightforward way of bank valuation: Price-to-Book As we usually look at...