I'm sitting at home next to the 153 pages prospectus for the IPO subscription to Croesus Retail Trust.
Having some diversification to Japan in my portfolio wouldn't be such a bad idea and since I missed MappleTree plus top investors such as Citadel or D.E. Shaw are investing in it, I am also thinking of having a piece of the cake.
Now this has been proven quite a challenge so far and I'm not done yet. It turns out I'm using Standard Chartered Online Trading Account, so far with the most competitive rates on the market (no fixed commission fee). However in order to suscribe to the IPO you need a CDP account which is not provided with this bank.
So on this lovely Saturday morning I looked into what was necessary for me to be able to subscribe to the IPO and get the CDP account, turns out that through DBS it might be one of the easiest way to go, so I went to one of the only 2 branches opened late (after 3pm) in Singapore: the Marina Bay Sands Branch - yes this is damn stupid, turn out the two branches are open so late because of the casino needs, but still had to queue in this tiny-far-away branch and wait 3hours+.
Now that I have the bank account account opened I still need to open the DBS Vicers trading account (which should come with a CDP account) and transfer the funds in time....quite a challenge, will update later if successful or not, I'm doing it this monday....!
Worse case scenario, I will buy post-IPO, depending on stock performance.
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[Continued]
So Monday morning of the week of the IPO, with the IPO application closing on the 8th of May at 12pm, I went to the DBS branch at Marina boulevard...for nothing. The DBS Vicars account manager told me that I wouldn't be able to have my CDP account open on time and advised me to go directly to SGX to open only the CDP account.
Then on Tuesday I went to the SGX office on Shenton Way to get my CDP account opened, which took only 10min and the staff was really nice. Just they couldn't tell me if I could link my CDP account with my Standard Chartered Trading account if I wanted at some point to sell my shares.
In the meantime, my fund transfer of money to my new DBS account was still not showing. I could see the money out of the Standard Chartered account but not yet in the DBS one...
After several refresh of my DBS online app during the past 15hours I woke up on the 8th with a good news, the funds had arrived on time and I went to the POSB ATM to make my bid.
Victory! Will update you on the results on how many lots I got in the end.
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Cheers!
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