Regulatory compliance consulting firm, Argus Global has fully integrated two business acquisitions: Ace Success, a Singapore based secretarial, accounting and tax practices company; and Argus Compliance India Private Limited, a subsidiary company, based in India, offering a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive bouquet of services in Singapore and India.
“The company is already looking to expand in Asia within three years and has set a revenue target of SGD50 million within five years,” says CEO Sachin Gandhi.
Argus Global’s clienteles in Singapore are mostly entities who are regulated by, or wish to be regulated by, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) effective Financial Institutions. Argus Global provides a full suite of services including licensing, building compliance policy and procedures, taking care of ongoing compliance for the regulated entity, trainings, internal audits and other regulatory compliance matters. The company is in the process of closing another transaction within the next month and another two by the next quarter.
While details are not available, Gandhi says these acquisitions will focus on the services and regions where Argus Global wants to grow in, such as creating a presence in Hong Kong, and adding an Environment Sustainability Consulting service to its offering.
“We at the onset have clear strategic roadmap and post setting up the business organically we have now started executing it. The compliance consulting and corporate services market in ASEAN market is fairly large, albeit very fragmented with thousands of practices of various sizes providing different levels of services at dramatically different prices levels. These can be the very small players who do not provide all aspects of service required to cater to the client and regulator’s need to large law firms which tend to be fairly transactional and quite expensive versus a boutique consulting firm as Argus Global.” Said Gandhi.
At the same time, the Singapore market is expanding with new initiatives such as Variable Capital Company (VCC), which should see a lot of Fund business move from Cayman and Mauritius. The Payment Services Act will bring a lot Digital Assets under the umbrella of MAS regulation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Anti-Money Laundering have significantly tightened for corporate service providers, thus increasing fixed overheads. The relevant systems and processes in place right from the beginning befits Argus Global’s expertise as a compliance consultant to regulated financial institutions. The company sees opportunities in consolidating such various services as the industry struggles to manage the pressures of operation with the new standards in place.
Argus Global is also considering raising equity in the short term to fund its aggressive expansion plans.
