More singaporeans are pawning their rolex watches for casino chips

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MORE SINGAPOREANS ARE PAWNING THEIR ROLEX WATCHES FOR CASINO CHIPS

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20 Jun 2014 - 8:55am








Yeah Lee Ching recalls when a lady walked into her pawnshop in Singapore and pledged a $10,000 diamond-studded gold Rolex watch to bankroll casino spending. She never came back for her jewelry.

Pawnbrokers are proliferating across Singapore as gamblers seeking short-term loans add to demand for quick cash from people struggling to make ends meet in the world’s most expensive city. The number of pawnshops in the city-state surged to 214 this year from 114 in 2008, according to a report by DMG & Partners Securities Pte. Loans disbursed by the industry jumped to S$5.5 billion ($4.4 billion) in 2013 from S$1.6 billion in 2007, government data show.

“Pawnshops are the most-frequent automated teller machines for regular gamblers,” Ivan Ho, president of Singapore Pawnbrokers’ Association, said in an interview this month. “They need capital and pawnshops offer them loans that are reasonably priced.”

Since Singapore’s two casinos opened in 2010, about 20 percent of the increase in pawnbroking activity is driven by clients raising money for gambling, said Ho, who’s also the owner of Heng Seng Pawnshop Co. The rest comes from business owners and low-income individuals who need quick cash to pay hospital bills and other unexpected costs.

“I pawn my jewelry when the need arises,” said Vikki, a businessman who runs his own security agency and asked to only be identified by his first name. “The biggest loan I got was S$70,000 to cover salaries of my staff when payments from customers got delayed.” He was speaking last week outside the ValueMax Group Ltd. pawnshop in Little India, just across the street from competitorMaxi-Cash (MCFS) Financial Services Corp.

Shares of ValueMax, Maxi-Cash and MoneyMax Financial Services Ltd. (MMFS) were all unchanged as of 12:08 p.m. in Singapore, while the benchmark Straits Times Index gained 0.2 percent.

Read the rest of the article here: https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/rolex-casino-cash-fuels-singapore-0626...


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