The Rise of Asian Universities vs Europe / US

I did double degree with one of these Asian school. I can tell you that they are definitely more and more on the radar of recruiters, but for local positions only (e.g. Chinese mainland schools now see a lot of recruiting from HK, but I believe none from NYK/LDN).

I don't know much about the Singaporean market specifically, so views from others would definitely help, but I would make the following considerations:

1. Do you have Singapore citizenship? I've heard that Singapore have become a much tougher market for foreigners trying to break into finance, on the back of regulatory changes. I may be completely off here but worth doing some homework around it

2. If the answer to 1. is a no, do you have any kind of SE Asian heritage? Different banks have different splits of work between Singapore and HK, but SE Asia remains a (the?) key market covered from Singapore. Therefore, language knowledge would be extremely helpful (or a huge hurdle for those who don't have it)

3. If both 1. and 2. are a no, I think you would find it difficult to land a good front office (e.g. IBD, AM, etc) gig in Singapore. As a datapoint, the Singapore IBD team of my BB does not have a single non-Asian banker; the office is tiny so it is not a comprehensive dataset, but take it as you will

4. If you're considering to do your MSc at NUS and then move back to Europe, it would be a fantastic life experience (for real!), but it may put you at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the grads from the local top schools. I'm confident you'd be able to find something, but the process would be less straightforward than from your usual European target

5. For what is worth, the above really applies to any top Asian school. Good luck explaining to a European recruiter what NUS/Beida/Keio/etc are, when (s)he's used to see LBS/HEC/Bocconi and the likes... HKUST may be a bit better than the rest from this perspective, but you would still lag way behind 

TL;DR: Asian schools are definitely more in the spotlight now than in the past for an array of reasons (incl. notable semi-political partnerships a-la Schwarzman scholars). However, if you don't have any specific hook to the region, I don't think it's wise to enrol in one of these schools if you want to break into finance - unless you're willing to make a big trade-off with your life experience.

If you want to get the Asia experience but "playing it safe", I would suggest to look into DDs. I was definitely happy with my experience and I believe quite a few Euro business schools offer Asian DDs now (e.g. LBS, a bunch of French schools, CEMS...)