By SIOW LI SEN

DBS will be hiring 300 new relationship managers (RMs) for its priority banking over the next few months - the bank's first major hiring drive since it controversially retrenched hundreds of employees last year.

DBS is taking out advertisements in the region for the hiring exercise which will add to its current 1,500 RMs across the group.

'We are hiring a few hundred and it's regional,' said Karen Ngui, DBS spokeswoman, yesterday. It's not known how many posts will be for Singapore.

Singapore accounts for some 63 per cent of net profits for the group, while Hong Kong contributes about 22 per cent.

Koh Boon Hwee, DBS chairman, at a press conference on the bank's third-quarter results said the outlook for next year is 'cautious but optimistic'.

Mr Koh said the bank will be hiring additional private bankers as well as more RMs for its priority banking business.

DBS said wealth management product sales have improved in the third quarter although it's still down from pre-crisis levels.

Sales in the third quarter touched $509 million against $221 million in the second quarter. Total sales for the first nine months of 2009 came to $968 million. In 2008 and 2007, wealth management sales totalled $2.8 billion and $7.8 billion respectively.

It will be the bank's first major employment exercise since it retrenched some 900 people almost a year ago and instituted a hiring freeze as it braced itself for the financial crisis which was sweeping the world.

The group's current headcount is 13,868, down 9 per cent from 15,166 a year ago.

As the economies in the region recover, several banks in Singapore have taken on additional staff.

Standard Chartered Bank, for instance, now has 5,800 employees, up from 4,700 in the first half of 2008, an increase of about 23 per cent.

This article was first published in The Business Times.