Temasek shakes up leadership as it prepares for renewal

[SINGAPORE] Temasek Holdings will divide its operations into three entities, in one of the biggest overhauls in its 51-year history, as it prepares for a new generation of leaders.

The company on Thursday (Aug 28) said it will set up three entities – Temasek Global Investments (TGI), Temasek Singapore (TSG) and Temasek Partnership Solutions (TPS) – to manage its portfolio segments.

“What we want to do is to make sure that we test the next generation and prepare them to take leadership of the company and for them to chart the course for 2040… You can call this our own 4G,” Dilhan Pillay, executive director and chief executive officer of Temasek, said at a media briefing.

The 62-year-old was referring to the term that Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party has been using for the current slate of leadership.

Temasek chief financial officer Png Chin Yee, 49, will concurrently be appointed president of TSG, effective Apr 1, 2026. This entity will oversee the company’s investments in Singapore firms.

These shareholdings, which accounted for 41 per cent of Temasek’s total portfolio of S$434 billion as at Mar 31, 2025, include local stock market heavyweights such as DBS and Singtel.

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Temasek said its Singapore-based portfolio companies have an aggregate revenue of about S$200 billion and employ more than 160,000 in the city-state.

Nagi Hamiyeh, head of Temasek’s operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa, will concurrently be appointed as president of TGI, focusing on Temasek’s international investments. The 56-year-old will remain based in Paris when he assumes the new role next April.

Temasek’s holdings in overseas companies, including a 25 per cent stake in Hong Kong-based retail giant AS Watson Holdings, comprise 36 per cent of its total portfolio.

“Nagi and Chin Yee have been tested in other roles outside of their comfort zones and they’ve done well,” Pillay said, citing Hamiyeh’s leadership of the portfolio development group in 2020 as an example.

Hamiyeh, who joined Temasek in 2005, helmed the group that he helped create four years ago near the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Likewise, Png in 2021 took on the role of deputy chief financial officer, which she was new to, after leading Temasek’s financial services portfolio for 10 years. Under her leadership, Temasek reshaped its financial services portfolio from one focused primarily on banks to include non-bank financial services.

Pillay said that TPS, which is undergoing a review, will not have a chief executive or president yet.

Instead, it will be run by an operating committee that works together with Gabriel Lim, the CEO-designate of Seviora Holdings. In addition to Seviora, TPS includes Temasek’s co-investments and venture capital-focused arm Vertex Holdings.

Lim, who joined Temasek in October 2024 as the joint head of corporate strategy, was named CEO-designate of Seviora in May. The former permanent secretary will assume the role fully on Sep 1, 2025.

He was widely expected to lead the TPS entity, of which Seviora accounts for 31 per cent.

That possibility was doused by Pillay, who said: “Gabriel can’t double-hat as CEO or president (of TPS); he has a big enough role at Seviora.”

Lim will work with TPS to undertake a strategic review of existing asset management companies – which have more than S$90 billion of assets under management as at Mar 31, 2025 – and explore growing new ones.

Pillay will be the chairman of the three new entities come next April, in addition to his current roles. He added that the restructure will position Temasek in the new global environment as it navigates an “ever-changing landscape”.

Other leadership changes

Also in the reorganisation, Chia Song Hwee, currently the deputy CEO of Temasek International, will be promoted to co-CEO with effect from Oct 1, 2025.

Chia, 62, will assume the additional roles of CEO of TGI, as well as deputy chairman of Temasek International, TSG and TPS next April.

Temasek International was formed during Temasek’s last major reorganisation in 2011. It is the wholly owned management arm of Temasek Holdings.

In another leadership change, current Temasek International chairman Lee Theng Kiat, 72, will step down and be replaced by Pillay next April.

The set-up of the three entities was earlier reported by Bloomberg, which said the purpose was to drive up investment returns.

One of the world’s largest and most active investors, Temasek’s 10-year total shareholder returns (TSR) stood at 5 per cent as at Mar 31, 2025. This lagged the 6 per cent logged by the Straits Times Index (STI), which is dominated by Temasek-owned companies. 

While Temasek’s 10-year TSR metric beat the 4 per cent from the MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan – the index for Asian stocks excluding Japan – it is nearly half of the 9 per cent yielded by the MSCI ACWI. That measures the performance of large to mid-sized companies in developed and emerging markets.

Temasek’s 20-year TSR, at 7 per cent, managed to beat just one of the three comparative metrics of its choosing: the MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan. It matched the other two metrics.

The Singapore government – Temasek’s sole shareholder via the Ministry of Finance – has maintained the company has outperformed market indices over the long term.

Investment returns

In response to questions on Temasek’s performance at a parliamentary session in August 2023, Chee Hong Tat, then senior minister of state for finance, said that MSCI indices are not direct benchmarks for Temasek’s performance, given that the company is not a portfolio fund manager and invests directly in companies. 

Investment returns from Temasek and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore, form the key components of net investment returns – in turn the biggest contributor to the city-state’s budget, at 20 per cent.

While Temasek has emphasised the resiliency of its returns over the long term, it has drawn flak in recent years over a few missteps. 

One of these is the investment in Indonesian startup eFishery, which reportedly incurred several hundred million dollars in losses between 2018 and 2024. The company, which deploys feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, was said to have misrepresented its financial figures for years.

Another high-profile failure was the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2023, which forced Temasek to write down its US$275 million investment.