OCBC share price at all-time high!

Crisis? What crisis? In the aftermath of the Iran war, OCBC share price rubbished all talks of economic crisis by surging to an all-time high of $23 on 15 April 2026. Year-to-date, OCBC share price rocketed 23.2%, making the counter the best performing bank stock in SGX.

In my last article of 2025, I talked up the possibility of OCBC share price smashing past $30 in 2026, fuelled by its gigantic $2.5 billion capital return to shareholders. On the basis of the current form of OCBC share price, it seems that the counter might have a decent shot at hitting $30.

The explosive form of OCBC share price in the past 6 months certainly made many investors sit up as the bank stock is usually a laggard in comparison to DBS and UOB. For years, OCBC had a CET1 significantly higher than its peers (often hovering above 15- 16%) while MAS requires only around 6.5% to 11%. The high CET1 buffer gave investors the impression that OCBC is inefficient in its capital management.

With the $2.5 billion capital return, OCBC’s CET1 should decrease to about 14%, thereby reducing its massive pile of unutilized cash. The capital return consists of 2 components – special dividends and share buybacks. The management has committed to paying special dividends of 16 cents per share for both FY2024 and FY2025. After accounting for the dividends, the remaining balance of the $2.5 billion is allocated for opportunistic share buybacks.

The strong momentum of OCBC share price since the second half of 2025 should be attributed to the aggressive share buybacks. As at 9 April 2026, the bank bought back 25.5 million of shares from the open market. Despite so, OCBC still has about $600 million of war chest ready for deployment through the rest of 2026.

Although the current bullish form of OCBC share price is likely fuelled by the share buybacks, investors should not take things for granted. Back in 2021, the bank repurchased 34 million of shares from the market for $383 million. Yet, OCBC share price remained muted and hovered around $11 to $12. By the time former CEO Helen Wong ended her tenure at end of 2025, OCBC share price was on fire, having hit nearly the historic high of $20.

Helen Wong achieved quite a number of major feats during her short tenure (nearly 5 years) – acquisition of PT Bank Commonwealth (Indonesia), increasing stake in Great Eastern to 93%, launching the $2.5 billion capital return plan, growing the bank’s wealth management AUM to a record $343 billion, as well as leading OCBC to achieve three consecutive years of record profits ($7.02 billion in FY2023, $7.59 billion in FY2024 and $7.42 billion in FY2025).

Given the stellar achievements made by Helen Wong, her successor, Mr. Tan Teck Long, certainly has big shoes to fill. Interestingly, Mr. Tan is a veteran from DBS, having spent 30 years holding key roles like Group Chief Risk Officer, Head of Corporate Banking, and Head of Institutional Banking in China, before becoming the CEO of OCBC in 2026. In this article, I will share some of the challenges that the new CEO could face in 2026 and how that may affect OCBC share price.

Note that this is an opinion article and not meant to be a financial advice. Please do your due diligence or engage financial advisors before investing in the stock market. I am not vested OCBC or Great Eastern shares at the moment. Whether OCBC share price of Great Eastern share price will surge or collapse has no impact on me. Thus, this article is not meant to induce readers to make any form of investment decisions.

OCBC share price decoupling from interest rates?

Helen Wong was considered lucky as OCBC rode on the rising tide of high interest rates in her final years as CEO. The high interest rates provided tailwinds to the Net Interest Margin (NIM) and led to record profits for the bank. But I suspect she [This is a premium article. The rest of the content is blocked and can be accessible by SG Wealth Builder Members only. To read the full content, please sign up as member.]

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