SINGAPORE: Singapore's third-biggest bank, OCBC, announced its arrival as a serious wealth player yesterday after clinching a surprise deal to buy Dutch-based ING's private banking unit in Asia for $1.5 billion.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp beat HSBC to the deal, which will triple the assets the Singapore bank manages for the rich and position it for opportunities in the fastest-growing private banking region of the world.

"What this would do is put the private bank on a firmer footing," Trevor Kalcic, banking analyst at RBS in Singapore, said of OCBC. "They had a very small private banking operation."