Singapore's finance minister has said the Government will take a "hands-off approach" to the activities of Temasek and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp, after the state investment agencies between them invested $23bn (€15.9bn) in UBS, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, minister of finance in Singapore, said to lawmakers in Parliament this morning that GIC and Temasek made the investments "independent of each other and the government", and that the stakes were bought for purely "commercial reasons", according to Bloomberg.