Ex-minister Mah Bow Tan joins Singapore fintech firm as investor, adviser

FORMER cabinet minister Mah Bow Tan has joined a group of seasoned market practitioners to invest in a fintech firm.

Mr Mah, who was Singapore's minister for National Development from 1999 to 2011, had been appointed as adviser and director of the Singapore-headquartered fintech firm, HydraX.

This adds to the number of board seats he has taken in the private sector. He is now non-executive chairman of GYP Properties and chairman of GlobalCities Sustainable Investment Pte Ltd.

A FinTech Awards finalist at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2018, HydraX offers a digital trading platform offering instantaneous price discovery and asset transfers across exchanges. The firm also provides an electronic trading platform for the execution of over-the-counter or off-exchange transactions.

Its management team has altogether 60 years of experience in finance, financial regulation, law and technology.

The team is headed by founding CEO Daryl Low who has prior experience with Singapore Exchange's legal and regulatory policy department.

They are supported by advisers who have invested in the firm in their personal capacities.

To name a few, they include Paul Tham, Keppel Capital's chief financial officer; Peter Koh, Oceanus Group's chief executive; Victor Khoo, Lumiere Capital's co-founder; Lee Junxian, Moovaz's CEO and co-founder; and Isaac Tay, honestbee's co-founder.

Trina Gan, HydraX's chief marketing officer, said: "Professional trading platforms for traditional asset classes such as equities and forex have been available for decades, providing traders with analytical tools and algorithmic trading capabilities.

"However, there is a dearth of purpose-built trading platforms for digital and alternative asset classes, which are flexible enough to handle a dissipated trading universe, while robust enough to power the demands of modern financial marketplaces.

"HydraX solves this by providing a complete suite of professional features across traditional and cryptographic asset classes, including charting, trade execution, portfolio monitoring, asset management and automated trading."