Met Ow Yew Heng in the in-house British-styled pub in his HQ. He runs companies in two of the hottest sectors now – hospitality and shipping. His family owns and operates SGX-listed Stamford Land and Singapore Shipping Corp. Heng is the CEO of Stamford Land, Australasia’s largest independent owner-operator of luxury hotels. It was reported … Read more
Good catching up with Andy Lim, chairman of private equity firm Tembusu Partners. A few common investments, and many common friends.
Met up with Neal Chandaria, the chairman and controlling shareholder of Innotek. His family is also a major shareholder and founder of Venture Corp, the largest manufacturer listed on the SGX. Innotek was formerly known as Mangecomp, a company I covered a couple of decades ago. It’s core HDD business was sold off about 15 … Read more
Congrats on the official opening of the ERA APAC Building today, Marcus Chu! Few people can boast better on the ground knowledge of the property market. As CEO of real estate agency ERA, he oversees 8,000 agents who raked in a record $740m in commissions last year. That’s close to a quarter of the Singapore … Read more
Caught up with Dr Chin Siau Ng, CEO of Singapore’s largest dental chain Q&M with 100 clinics here (another 42 in Malaysia). He made news recently for taking a controlling stake in No Signboard Holdings, the embattled seafood restaurant group best known for its white pepper crab. The Catalist-listed firm was suspended from trading in … Read more
Over breakfast yesterday, Chay Yee Meng reminded me that we last met up for coffee before I got married. That’s almost 15 years ago. We first met when he was the CFO of Natsteel Electronics, the largest contract manufacturer in Singapore and the sixth largest in the world. Apple was its top client, accounting for … Read more
I met up with Thomas Tan, CEO of Kim Heng, for coffee. The offshore & marine company his family founded has bucked the trend, with its share price surging 40% over the past week as it is seen as a beneficiary of the climbing oil price. I first met Thomas back in 2008 when he … Read more
Tan Wang Cheow, founder of Food Empire, started doing business in Russia in the late 1980s, when it was still known as Soviet Union. The adventurous accountant built a coffee empire there, before expanding to other far-flung countries like Iran, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Notably, Food Empire’s MacCoffee is the #1 instant coffee brand in both … Read more
It has been a while since I caught up with Aztech Global’s founder Michael Mun. I knew him back in 2005 when I initiated coverage on his company. It’s core tech manufacturing business was doing well up till 2007, but started to struggle after. Michael made a strategic decision to diversify into a couple of … Read more
Like most kids, Yeah Lee Ching grew up playing with building blocks. Except that her blocks were made of gold.