Wee, UOB's chairman and chief executive, risks seeing his influence in the bank eroded if he loses his battle with Temasek for control of United Overseas Land (UOL), a property firm that has a four percent stake in UOB.

The Wee family currently controls 14 percent of UOB through cross holdings in Haw Par Corp, UOL and Overseas Union Enterprise (OUE).

"Maintaining control of UOL, Haw Par and OUE is therefore important to the Wee family," Citigroup research head Lim Jit Soon said in a research note.

UOB last week set things in motion when it announced a "renounceable" offer to sell a 36.9 percent stake in UOL to the bank's shareholders at a preferential price of 1.58 Singapore dollars (93 US cents) a share.

Temasek surprised the market Tuesday when it offered to buy UOB's entire 49 percent stake in UOL at 2.06 dollars a share in a hostile takeover bid, prompting UOB to withdraw the share sale as it considered the options.

Wee is expected to make a counter-offer but anlaysts said he needs to play smart as he does not have the deep pockets of Temasek.

Winston Siay, associate director of Standard and Poor's Asian Equity Research, said Wee was unlikely to engage Temasek in a head-on clash.

"You can't fight a giant. Temasek has almost unlimited capital. Wee will have to come out with a strategy to avoid a confrontation," Siay told AFP.

Although Wee is Singapore's richest banker and the island's third richest individual according to Forbes Magazine, he would have to fork out an estimated S$1.5 billion if he wanted to buy up UOL shares and warrants.

The sum could go higher if there is a price war.

"Temasek has the deeper pockets no doubt about that," said David Lum, an analyst with the Daiwa Institute of Research. "If he has to fight, he would have to be smarter than Temasek."

This week's events have set the local financial industry abuzz that exciting times, possibly unseen since the banking industry shake-up three years ago, were ahead.

The banking consolidation of 2001 saw UOB as the hunter, buying smaller rival Overseas Union Bank.

That shake-up saw the number of Singapore banks shrink from five to three, with Finance Minister Lee Hsien Loong saying then the city-state of four million people had room for only two home-grown lenders if they were to compete with bigger foreign banks in a liberalised environment.

Temasek, which holds stakes in a wide range of heavyweight Singapore firms, has said its interest in UOL is driven by purely commercial reasons but this has failed to stop market speculation about its real intentions.

"Whilst the reason for Temasek's offer to buy UOB's interest in UOL is unclear, we believe Wee Cho Yaw could read this as a challenge to his shareholding and control in UOB," Merrill Lynch said in a research note.

Mano Sabnani, editor-in-chief of the Today newspaper, said a successful bid by Temasek would open up the Wee family's corporate empire "to possible takeover plays."

He noted that the family controls UOB and its non-bank associates through various cross-holdings and does not have direct majority control in any of the listed firms.

Analysts said other tycoons with interests in Wee's listed businesses could make their own bids for UOL to protect their shareholdings, among them Filipino magnate John Gokongwei.

Forbes Magazine estimates Wee's personal fortune at 2.2 billion US dollars.

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