Piyush Gupta runs Southeast Asia's largest bank and most valuable public company, Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd. It has thrived by lending to regional companies and managing the wealth of Asia's new rich. So why does the chief executive officer sound at times like a banker under siege? Gupta sees trouble ahead-not from DBS's rivals in banking but from financial-technology companies in China.Banks everywhere have to deal with fintech upstarts, but it's different in Asia. "We are in the front line," Gupta says. In the U.S., tech giants such as Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook, and Google have been slow to move into online finance, where they would face far tighter and more complex regulation than they're used to. So U.S. banks "could afford to be a little more sanguine," Gupta says.
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