SWF's Holding Periods: (C),(UBS)

Now, this is a long term perspective..

In an interview recently on Bloomberg TV, Lee Kuan Yew the head of the Government of Singapore Investment corp. (GIC) said “We are buying into something that we intend to keep for the next two or three decades and grow with them.” He was talking about his recent $18 billion worth of investments in both Citigroup (C) and UBS (UBS).

He continued, “If there are other banks of the quality of the two that we bought into, with the promise and the capabilities and inherent capabilities to recover, we have got the liquidity to meet it, to make such an investment,”

Yew currently has 6% of the $300 billion in assets he has on hand invested in the two banks.

Why? Yew says both banks have good franchises and brands and GIC has a performance benchmark of 5 to 10 years. “Will there be another Swiss bank like UBS for wealth management? I doubt it, we doubt it, that is why we invested in it,” he said.

5 years from now we will look back at the current financial situation much like folks did in the mid 90’s after the 1990-1991 recession and the mess financials were in at the time.

The large banks will get stronger as the weak get flushed and their will be score on investors kicking themselves for not pulling the trigger “back then”.

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long C, None