by Tng Ying Hui
When compulsory national service commenced in 1967, Kartar Singh said many businessmen he knew were reluctant to enlist their children. They left Singapore with their families. It was “scary” when the time came for the oldest of his four sons to enlist in national service, he said. But he said he decided to stay put as he “had already fallen in love with Singapore”. He explained that doing business in Singapore is straightforward, and he has “never had to pay any bribes”.
The Thakral Group shifted its headquarters to Singapore in the 1970s, and Kartar Singh became its chairman. Crucial business decisions had to be taken in those years as the Chinese were selling their textiles in massive volumes and it had affected the Thakral Group’s sales. Kartar Singh decided that they needed to diversify into consumer electronics. By the mid-1990s, the Thakral Group had such strong networks in China that major Japanese electronic firms like Panasonic, Sharp and Sony used the Thakral Group as their main distributor, especially for VCRs.
In 1994, the Thakral Group decided to take part of its distribution business public. Thakral Corporation, which combined the Group’s operations in Hong Kong, Japan and China, was earmarked as the public company. Kartar Singh was its executive director. The rest of the Thakral Group remained as a family-run private company. In 1995, Thakral Corporation was listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange. It was the largest listing that year, with a market capitalisation of over US$400 million at the initial share offer price.
Thakral Corporation soon diversified into real estate—a sector that Kartar Singh is passionate about. In the early 1990s, he set up a property firm, called Thakral Holdings, to manage the company’s Australian hospitality real estate assets. The company has been successful, and those who work with him said he has the intuition and ability to spot opportunities in the sector. Kartar Singh is currently focusing on assessing the Japanese market, comparing the commercial property prices in different cities.
In 2008, the business magazine Forbes ranked Kartar Singh as Singapore’s 30th richest person. Asked about his success, he said it was unexpected. He attributes it to “divine blessings”, and family support. His father and older brothers taught him how to run a business, he said, adding, “Money is not my goal. I am driven by the adventure and excitement of doing business. I am pleased when the business generates employment and career opportunities for people”.
Between 1994 and 1998, Kartar Singh was a board member of the Trade Development Board, which is now known as International Enterprise Singapore. His proudest moment was when he was named “Businessman of the Year 1995” at the Singapore Business Awards in in 1996. The Business Times wrote a glowing feature about him, saying, “being ahead has always been the name of Kartar Singh Thakral’s game”.
Kartar Singh is still active in his business after 60 years and continues to contribute to society. He believes that profitability and social responsibility can go hand in hand. Currently, he is a trustee of the Singapore Sikh Education Foundation and the Sri Guru Nanak Sat Sang Sabha, and patron of the Singapore Khalsa Association and the Sikh Welfare Council Singapore.
References
Fiona Smith, “$2bn Success all in the Genes – Thakral Chief,” The Australian Financial Review,
Sept 25, 1996.
“Kartar Singh Thakral,” History of the Sikhs, accessed March 2015,
http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/personalities/kartar_singh_thakral.html
“Milestones,” Thakral Corporation Ltd, accessed March 2015,
http://www.thakralcorp.com/mile.asp
Interviews with Kartar Singh Thakral in March 2015, and Bikram Singh Thakral
via email in July and September 2015.
Kartar Singh Thakral
Thailand, b.1933
Tan Sri Frank Tsao Wen-King
The Maverick Mariner
In the 1980s, Singapore was looking to turn itself into a maritime hub but did not know how to do so. The government asked Chinese national Tan Sri Frank Tsao under what circumstances would he, the number three in Asia’s shipping world, would relocate his business here from Hong Kong. As a result, International Maritime Carriers’ (IMC) entry into Singapore drew many other shipowners here and they ended up treating the island-state as more than just a port-of-call.
Shanghai-born Tan Sri Frank Tsao Wen-King was born into a rich family. His grandfather started a successful transportation business along the banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai and his father developed it. But most of the family’s wealth was wiped out during World War II. When the war ended, Tsao married his childhood sweetheart Maisie Chow. China soon descended into civil war. To escape the turmoil, the family fled to Hong Kong in 1949. Tsao was only 24 years old then but as the oldest of five children, he bore the responsibility to provide for his family. Till today, Tsao recalls the uprooting with deep anguish and tears. Leaving Shanghai, which he still thinks of as home, remains a painful memory.
A year on in Hong Kong, during a walk by the waterfront with his father-in-law one evening, Tsao saw two ships unloading cargo. It was an ordinary moment but it had an impact on Tsao. He was inspired to continue with his family’s trade in the hope of running his own maritime shipping line one day. He went on to buy his first ship and set up a shipping company, Great Southern Steamship, with a partner. Though the business partnership fell apart later due to differences in leadership style and Tsao dissolved the company, he subsequently set up IMC in 1966. In the next few decades, Tsao amassed a substantial fleet and became a major player in the industry.
In the 1980s, uncertainty surrounded Hong Kong’s future. Hong Kong, then a crown colony administered by the British, was due to be returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Against this backdrop, many businesses were looking for opportunities outside Hong Kong. At that time, Singapore wanted to fashion itself as a maritime hub and needed a reputable ship operator to make Singapore its base. David Chin Soon Siong, then-director of Trading and Services at the Trade Development Board (now International Enterprise Singapore), was tasked with wooing Tsao here. Tsao pointed out that Singapore’s tax policy was a deterrent to shipowners.
“I asked Tsao what we should do and he told me, ‘sit down with me in Hong Kong’,” Chin recalled. Over a few visits, Chin went to Tsao’s office, looking through IMC’s entire financial accounts to understand the operations of a mega shipping company. Tsao then suggested that Singapore create a scheme where foreign flagged ships registered outside Singapore could receive tax incentives here. He walked Chin through the design of the scheme.
The Singapore government heeded his advice and the Approved International Shipping Enterprise Scheme (AIS) was unveiled in 1991. It aimed to draw more major international ship operators here, as their spending would stimulate the economy and their presence would encourage the development of an array of ancillary services such as ship financing. Previously, only Singapore-flagged ships were entitled to tax rebates. Chin said that AIS was a very comprehensive scheme thanks to Tsao. “He taught me the tricks of the trade,” Chin added. Not only did Tsao help devise a scheme that benefited IMC, he also told Chin how the scheme could be expanded to interest his competitors. "Tsao's generosity was one of the many reasons why he was given the honorary citizen award [in 2008],” said Chin.
Shipowners from all over the world were thus incentivised to move their operations here. IMC was the first to come on board, with 70 ships and its corporate headquarters moving to Singapore. Other shipping companies soon followed suit. Today, 130 shipping groups call Singapore home. As of June 2015, the maritime industry contributed 7% of Singapore’s GDP and employed more than 170,000 people.
By helping Singapore become a maritime hub, Tsao shifted the shipping industry’s attention from the West to Asia. When the Asian Shipowners Forum (ASF) was formed in 1992, Tsao lobbied for a secretary-general to represent the voices of the members and for the organisation to be headquartered in Singapore. Over the next 15 years, he visited all 13 member countries to convince them to build the ASF headq
uarters in Singapore. In 2007, the ASF opened its office in Singapore. In so doing, Singapore became the centre of Asia’s shipping business.
The shipping magnate was also one of the five major backers of Suntec City. The other four were Hong Kong tycoons Sir Run Run Shaw, Li Ka-Shing, Lee Shau Kee and Cheng Yu-Tung. According to Tsao’s autobiography, My Sixty Years: Turbulent Sailing, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew called on this group of businessmen when he visited Hong Kong in 1984. He asked, “You have made investments in Europe and America. Why don’t you do the same in Singapore?”
The five tycoons discussed Lee’s request and came up with the idea of an international convention and exhibition centre, which became known as Suntec City. As Tsao was most familiar with Singapore, he was nominated to be the Chairman of the Suntec Group.
Suntec City was an investment made during a time of economic recession. But the five men believed that Singapore would recover from the downturn. It cost the group of tycoons $2 billion to build the development, which had five tower blocks, a retail and entertainment zone and 1 million sq ft of convention and exhibition space. In 1996, the inaugural World Trade Organisation ministerial conference was held at Suntec. Other meetings and international exhibitions have been held there since.
Suntec City was designed by I.M. Pei and Partners, local firm DP Architects, and Tsao’s younger son, Calvin, of New York-based Tsao & McKown Architects. Calvin Tsao is a renowned architect who has renovated several buildings in Beijing’s Forbidden City. Tsao’s elder son, Frederick, has taken over his business at IMC. His elder daughter, Dr Mary Ann Tsao, runs some of the family businesses and the family’s Tsao Foundation founded in 1993 by her father and grandmother, Mrs Tsao Ng Yu Shun.
Tsao does not live in Singapore full-time, shuttling between Hong Kong and Singapore. His late mother lived in Hong Kong. But the family chose to set up their foundation in Singapore because it is corruption-free, said Tsao. The foundation is well-known for its focus on improving the quality of life of elderly folk. It does this through healthcare and counselling services for the elderly, training eldercare professionals and conducting research into innovative ways to further promote the well-being of the elderly. Among its many projects is an integrated community health and social care system that allows older people to “age in place”.
Asked in an interview if he ever envisioned the success he has achieved, Tsao said that in the immediate aftermath of World War II, he felt as though he was “sailing against the wind”. Today though, it is clear that the path he charted has not just anchored him in success, but has also benefited Singapore in different ways.
References
Frank W.K. Tsao, My Sixty Years: Turbulent Sailing
(Hong Kong: IMC Group Publishing, 2010).
Maritime Port Authority Singapore,. 2015. National Geographic Channels Present ‘INSIDE MARITIME SINGAPORE’, http://www.news.gov.sg/public/sgpc/en/media_releases/agencies/mpa/press_release/P-20150626-1.html.
Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister, Grand Opening of the Singapore International Convention
and Exhibition Centre (Speech at Suntec City Opening, Singapore, August 30, 1995),
http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19950830.pdf
Tan Sri Frank Tsao Wen-King
China, b.1925
Alain Vandenborre
Singapore’s Evangelist
Belgium-born serial entrepreneur Alain Vandenborre wanted to solve the problem of high net-worth individuals treating Singapore as just a port-of-call. His solution? Getting them to keep their treasures here.
Born in Belgium in 1960, Alain Vandenborre was still a teenager when he won the country’s Young Scientist Award in 1978, for designing a system that transmitted Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony through a laser beam. He went on to study astrophysics at the University of Liege, and microelectonics and optical telecommunications at the University of Paris.
At the age of 26, Vandenborre set up his own company which developed the first laser system to produce microchips. The laser production system was sold to major French defence and manufacturing companies like Matra, Thales, Aerospatiale and Groupe Dassault. Thereafter, he pursued a post-graduate degree in Business Management from the University of Brussels and worked at various large multinational companies in Paris.
The first time Vandenborre came here in 1995, he was struck by Singapore’s multiculturalism. That year he travelled here again a few more times for work. To understand Singapore better, Vandenborre read feature articles of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in European magazines, as Lee’s memoirs had not yet been published. He said he was “inspired” by the statesman’s vision for the country. Simultaneously, he was attracted to life in Singapore and in 1997, he and his family moved here from Paris. He was then head of International Development of French multinational GDF Suez. “Mr Lee Kuan Yew brought me here without knowing,” said Vandenborre, who added that he often wrote to Lee to seek his opinions about domestic and world affairs.
Vandenborre was, respectively, the executive vice-chairman and chairman of the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association between 2001 and 2006. The Association was set up to promote the development of the venture capital and private equity industry and to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in the business sector. During his tenure as chairman, the number of venture capital firms in Singapore grew from 15 to about 50 companies. “I see this as my first national service to Singapore,” he quipped.
Vandenborre’s wife, Laurence, describes him as a “Singapore evangelist” because he has never given up persuading others to see the merits of the country. In 2010, Vandenborre and two Swiss partners, Yves Bouvier and Jean-Jacques Borgstedt, unveiled the Singapore FreePort, a sleek 22,500 sq-metre high-security vault that offers wealthy collectors tax-free storage, and a place to display and sell their fine art, jewellery, wine, cigars, and carpets, among other things. The FreePort is located in a free trade zone within Changi Airport. Modelled after the Freeport in Switzerland, the Singapore FreePort is backed by the EDB and Bouvier’s fine art logistics company, Natural Le Coultre.
Vandenborre understood that Singapore was working towards becoming the world’s wealth management capital, and FreePort would attract high-net-worth individuals to have “personal engagement” with the country. As he put it in a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal, “If you have money in a bank in Singapore, you might not come to Singapore. But if you have a Van Gogh here, you will.”
In an interview for the book, he added, “We don’t just want to have passive investors. There must be personal engagement. Ultra-high net worth individuals bring their friends along with them when they come. They stay for a week, start shopping around for real-estate, then, over time some move their family and children here for education, others invest in local companies.”
The FreePort has helped Singapore’s arts hub ambitions. In a 2010 Bloomberg interview, Professor Tommy Koh, as chairman of the National Heritage Board, said, “The Singapore Freeport is a golden link in the value chain to promote Singapore as a centre of art, culture and antiquities and for storage and sale of such high value items.”
Vandenborre also co-founded the Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris museum in Fort Canning Park with art historian Marc Restellini. The heritage site is a “sleeping beauty,” he said, because though rich in history, the park has been underutilised. The museum, housed in a building perched at the top of hill, is an offshoot of the renowned Pinacothèque de Paris located in Paris. In Greek, Pinacothèque means “room which contains a collection of paintings”.
The Pinacothèque museum has its own permanent collection of more than 40 rarely-seen works, including those of Spanish cubist painter Pablo Picasso, French impressionist painter Claude Monet and Dutch painter Rembrandt, all sourced from private collectors. Art from the Paris museum will also be exhibited in Singapore. The Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris occupies a niche in the museum landscape here with its mostly Western collection of art, said Van
denborre, whose favourite artist is Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
Since 2014, Vandenborre and his team have been setting up the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX)—the world’ s first commodity exchange for diamonds. There was previously no fixed price for diamonds and the industry was shrouded in secrecy. An exclusive group of dealers would simply gather at a wholesale market and negotiate prices of the diamonds on display, “like a fish market,” said Vandenborre.
With SDiX, there is a price discovery mechanism to monitor all bids. It lends transparency to the obscure market and facilitates investments in polished diamonds. Temasek Holdings’ subsidiary Vertex Ventures has backed this first-of-its-kind enterprise, having purchased a 20% stake in the venture.
Work has kept Vandenborre busy but he has promised Laurence that once he slows down, he will devote time to her non-profit humanitarian organisation, Red Pencil International, which uses art therapy to help traumatised patients, particularly children, deal with overwhelming life circumstances like natural disasters, being caught in conflict zones and long-term hospitalisation. It has missions in 18 countries today.
In 2002, Vandenborre—to the bewilderment of his friends—gave up his Belgian citizenship to become a Singaporean. Said Vandenborre, “They wondered why any EU citizen would give up the European passport.” He answered this question in a memoir he published in 2003. In Proudly Singaporean, he wrote, “I love the people, the cultures and—most importantly—the values of Singapore.” He also attributed his success to the guidance he has received in Singapore from a few mentors, adding, “there is nowhere else in the world I could have done what I have successfully without the support of Singapore Inc.”