Rear Admiral (NS) Lui Tuck Yew was the Minister of State for Education until March 2009, when he was promoted to Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts with effect from 1st April 2009. With his promotion, he displaced the incumbent Dr Lee Boon Yang, who now found himself without a job.

Only 25 days after RAdm Lui’s promotion, Dr Lee Boon Yang was the newly appointed non-executive Chairman of Keppel Corp, Singapore’s largest industrial conglomerate. It was an event of little fanfare, and by the lack of any noise made by Keppel shareholders, you would have thought that everybody is happy about the change in leadership at the helm of Keppel’s board of directors.

However, a careful examination of Dr Lee Boon Yang’s CV, and the demands of the role of Chairman of the Board of an industrial conglomerate like Keppel – leaves the interested observer rather puzzled.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Yes, they were good long term investments with risks thoroughly assessed”

- Minister Tharman, Jan 2008 on Singapore investments in banks.

These were the words of Singapore’s Minister of Finance, slightly more than a year ago when Singapore’s SWFs made major investments in a few global financial institutions. Take note, in particular, that Minister Tharman was defending the individual investments made by the SWFs in the banks – not the portfolio performance.

A year later, everything had changed. The stock markets had declined significantly and the global financial system was in major turmoil. The stock prices of the big banks had sunk to record lows after having their balance sheets destroyed by the dislocation in credit markets. Seeing that his original argument was no longer tenable, Tharman changed his tack as the investments in the banks sunk deeper and deeper into the red. Now, instead of taking the line that the investments in the banks were good long term investments, he instead argued that Singapore’s portfolios were well diversified, and hence Singapore’s investments were fine.

‘We would be worried if global banks comprise a large proportion of the portfolios of GIC and Temasek, or for that matter, any other highly vulnerable industry globally,’ he said. ‘But these are diversified portfolios, with not a large degree of concentration risk.’

- Minister Tharman, Jan 2009, on Singapore investments in banks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three cheers to Conrad Raj today for his much needed commentary on Temasek’s divestment of BoA in TODAY. Conrad is one of the few independent voices in Singapore’s journalism scene who truly is bold and daring to ask the tough questions of Singapore’s corporate elite.

Singaporeans need to thank him for calling Temasek Holdings into account and for voicing out the concerns of Temasek’s true shareholders – ordinary Singaporeans like you and me.With parliament unwilling and unable to do its job of demanding transparency and accountability from Temasek, it is absolutely necessary for independent journalists and the media to ask tough questions and demand straight answers from the stewards of Singapore’s capital. Indeed, Singaporeans deserve much more than to be patronized repeatedly by being told of the SWFs’ “long-term” view of their investments.

I hope that Conrad and his business team will be all the more bold in questioning the managers of our country’s savings – for it is only when shareholders demand and monitor it that corporate governance becomes effective in protecting the interests of those it is supposed to serve.
 
Singaporeans too should ask the tough questions needed by writing to the press, or picking up their own pens in their blogs.