The unspoken reason why hedge funds are leaving Singapore for Dubai
If you want a hedge fund job in 2025, you might want to try either Dubai or Abu Dhabi. In September last year, the Dubai International Financial Centre revealed that it now has 60 "pure play" hedge funds, of which 44 are in the "billion dollar club." Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, has attracted the likes of Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace and is running out of space on its 'hedge fund island.'
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While the United Arab Emirates is revelling in its hedge fund magnetism, headhunters say other locations are losing out. They include London, where the weather is cold and taxes are high. But they also include Singapore, which has neither of those problems but another which is less discussed. - Visas.
"The multistrategy hedge funds are opening in Dubai to attract talent from London and Asia which wants to work tax-free," says Augusta Aiken, founder of search firm Augusta Aiken & Associates. "But they're also opening in Dubai because it's much easier to get people visas there than it is in Singapore."
Last year, Singapore tightened the rules concerning the employment of expats and specified that in the financial sector, non-Singaporeans must earn at least US$4.5k a month to be eligible for an employment pass. This shouldn't be a problem for hedge funds, but headhunters say it's not the only issue: when an organization employs a high proportion of non-Singaporeans, they claim the government makes it very difficult to get new employment passes or to renew existing ones.
"There's no specific rule, but the Singaporean government pushes hedge funds to hire locals, especially at the junior end," says one Singapore-based hedge fund headhunter. "And a lot of senior portfolio managers who've been in Singapore for years struggle to get permanent residence, so after a few tries they just throw in the towel and move to Dubai."
Obtaining a work permit and residency visa in Dubai is easy by comparison: Dubai has 12 different kinds of work permit and operates a "Zero Bureaucracy Program" to make applying easy. "In Dubai, you can easily sponsor everyone in the company," says another headhunter, speaking off the record. "It's just far, far easier to get visas. In Singapore you are always up against a threshold."
Hedge funds we spoke to denied that visas are an issue in Singapore, but another hedge fund headhunter said this is because it's a "very, very sensitive issue." There's not enough hedge fund talent in Singapore, he added, but the government also needs to make sure that foreign talent doesn't displace locals from high paying jobs.
One local headhunter says the difficulty getting visas in Singapore means that hedge funds in the country tend to employ locals in junior and support roles and to save their "visa bullets" for the highest paid, hardest to find senior portfolio managers. This effectively means, though, that the enormous supply of talent from India and China is mostly closed to hedge funds in Singapore. "Why not pick the best and brightest out of that cohort?" says another headhunter. To do that, funds need to be in Dubai.
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