Singapore: playground of the super-rich...

"Oh, Marmiteland,” said a friend when I announced I was going to Singapore. “You’ll either love it or hate it. It’s really just a huge shopping mall with an airport attached.” Her remark was fairly typical of many who have not visited the tiny tropical city-state in the past five years or so. They still tend to dismiss it as just a safe, clean place for shoppers, a retail utopia where litter louts are arrested and chewing gum is banned. It is, they say, the Far East without the rough edges: perfect for a one-night stopover, and just as soon forgotten.

 Yet Singapore is booming – and the new-found energy of the place is palpable everywhere, as is its conspicuous wealth. Despite being geographically smaller than the Isle of Wight, Singapore has more millionaires per capita of its five million population than anywhere else on the planet. The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report places Singapore second only to Switzerland, based largely on an entrepôt trade in which raw materials are imported, then refined for re-export. Despite having no oil, for instance, Singapore operates the third-largest oil refinery in the world. Full story...

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