Kuala Lumpur, 3 November 2008 – HwangDBS Investment Management Berhad ("HwangDBS IM" or the Company) declared an interim income distribution for its second institutional fund, an income-type bond fund, the HwangDBS Enhanced Deposit Fund ("EDF" or the Fund).

HwangDBS IM declared an interim gross income distribution of 0.75 sen for EDF’s financial year ending 30 April 2009. This represents its sixth distribution since its launch on 18 April 2005 and EDF has, notably, registered a total growth of 11.53 per cent¹ on its NAV per unit. All EDF unit holders registered as at 20 October 2008 were eligible to receive the income allotment. The Fund has, since its inception, outperformed its benchmark, the Maybank 3-Month Fixed Deposit Rate by a total of 11.07 per cent² and has distributed a total of 5.95 sen since inception.

Teng Chee Wai, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of HwangDBS IM commented, "HwangDBS IM is pleased to be able to continue declaring income distributions despite increasingly challenging market conditions. In such tough times, we are certainly mindful of the need to manage the consistency of our funds’ performances and to ensure that we meet with the objectives of our funds"

Furthermore, Teng stated that over the third quarter, yields of Malaysian Government Securities ("MGS") have tightened across the board, causing the MGS yield curve to shift down. Expectations of a potential increase in the Overnight Policy Rate ("OPR") dissipated over the quarter as inflationary pressures eased and concerns over economic growth domestically and globally were more predominant.

Moreover, yields of local corporate bonds tightened on the short end as at end of September 2008 as the windfall profit levy imposed on independent power producers ("IPPs") was also called off and replaced with a one-off payment instead.

It has been a volatile global market environment. Nonetheless, the Fund performance was relatively stable given our shorter duration and good quality AAA and AA-rated bond holdings. The NAV fluctuation was mainly due to the mark to market valuation of the bonds rather than actual trades done in the market.

In summary, HwangDBS IM will focus on investing in high quality AAA and AA-rated bonds as well as searching for undervalued bonds which has potential upgrade or yield compression. The Fund also continued to participate in numerous primary corporate bond issues of both local and foreign issuers.

1 Source: Lipper as at 30 September 2008