ROUNDTABLE PANELLISTS

• UOB: Wee Ee Cheong, chief executive officer • Vicom: Sim Wing Yew, chief executive officer • InnoTek: Lou Yiliang, chief executive officer

Moderator: Uma Devi, The Business Times

IN the Singapore Corporate Awards 2022, the award for the best chief executive officer (CEO) aims to recognise CEOs who have led an organisation to scale new heights in its respective industry segment, while also achieving excellence in corporate governance. 

These CEOs act as role models, whose examples we strive to follow. They are able to envision better ways of doing business, inspire employees to achieve excellence beyond their dreams in the products and services they provide, build their company’s brand and presence, and contribute to the development of their industry.

The Business Times speaks to the leaders of 3 Singapore-listed companies who took home the award this year: UOB’s Wee Ee Cheong; Vicom’s Sim Wing Yew, and Innotek’s Lou Yiliang. 

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Question: The past year has been filled with many twists and turns, including the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic across many countries, higher inflation, and growing threats of  a global economic recession. As a CEO, how have you reacted to these challenges, and what has your company done to help weather the storms? 

Wee: UOB is a long-term player in the region. We are prepared to go through business cycles with our customers and colleagues. During the pandemic, we were the first bank to allocate S$3 billion in relief assistance to help our customers, especially the SMEs and to set up a dedicated restructuring task force to provide support in reworking their financial needs. We had no Covid-19 related retrenchments.

 The current macro backdrop of higher inflation and interest rates have diverging implications on banks. Higher interest rates will boost our interest income, but they will also weigh on overall business and credit costs as the economy slows. UOB is well positioned to face any near-term headwinds with our well-diversified revenue drivers, resilient portfolio, strong balance sheet, healthy capital and liquidity positions.

Sim: These are challenging times indeed. CEOs around the world have certainly had it tough the last 2 years, having had to first deal with the ravages of the global pandemic and now, with high inflation and the threat of recession that’s affecting most economies.

In the trying environment that we have been facing, we have been exercising financial prudence. During the height of the pandemic, the board and management took director fee and salary cuts. In terms of expenses, we have put off all non-mission critical capital expenditure and focused only on expenses that are essential for the effective running of our business. 

Lou: InnoTek is facing challenges on several fronts. The spread of Covid-19 in China during the first half of the year impacted operating performance; many customers were forced to suspend production or face shortages of parts due to the outbreak in Shanghai, resulting in our orders being delayed. The price of raw materials such as steel and aluminium has been on the rise since last year, hindering profitability. Difficulties in the macroeconomic environment in China have also prompted some of our clients to accelerate their shift to South-east Asia.

In response, we have formulated various corresponding measures, such as being more flexible in material procurement, inventory management and production scheduling, further strengthening our relationship with key customers to maintain our place as their preferred supplier in China, and intensifying efforts to improve our production sites in Thailand and Vietnam to better respond to our customers’ strategic adjustments. 

More importantly, we are striving to expand our business into emerging industries such as electronic vehicles, energy storage, servers, medical device, semiconductors, which will pave the way for our future development.

Q: In your company, what are your top 3 priorities for you as the chief executive officer currently, and why have these emerged as your top focus points?

Wee: My top three priorities continue to be as follows:

1. To deepen our regional franchise across both retail and wholesale businesses, which includes a successful integration of our acquisition of Citigroup’s retail franchise in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam;

2. To support our customers to thrive in this new digital and green world by providing practical solutions especially for our SMEs customers. For example, through our FinLab Accelerator and U-Solar programmes; and

3. To foster an environment which attracts talents with the right set of values, to grow our own timber and help our colleagues attain their full career potential with training and developmental opportunities.

Sim: My top three priorities are staff retention and upskilling, cost management and revenue growth.

Lou: First, setting the right corporate culture. This is done via a two-pronged strategy: first, we intend to deepen the concept of QCDS (Quality, Cost, Delivery, Service) within the company, to add value to our customers. Next, we implemented an incentive system to optimise operational efficiency and increase our employees’ sense of belonging and happiness. Ultimately, we would like to achieve a good balance of customer satisfaction, employee happiness, and shareholder returns.

Second, we are focused on securing more orders and achieving technological breakthroughs, while coping with inflation and rising costs. Only by solving these problems can we bring InnoTek to new heights.

Third, strategic planning. InnoTek’s subsidiary, Mansfield Group, is a traditional manufacturing company with a history of more than 40 years. The secret behind its long history is choosing the right business to develop, such as our stamping and precision machining business, or breaking into the Office Automation (OA), Auto and TV industries. The businesses that we focused on in the past have performed quite well, and today we are at the cusp of transforming ourselves again, by going into the field of electronic vehicle and energy storage, and making it the driving force for our development in the next 3 or 5 years.

Q: How has your role as a chief executive officer changed over the course of 2021 and 2022? What has become tougher for you, and what are some areas of opportunity that you see for the company?

Wee: Like for many, the past 2 years have been transformational to lives and livelihoods but we adjusted.  Due to Covid-19, we saw the acceleration of digital adoption across our retail and corporate customers. We have been able to scale up our businesses meaningfully through digital means with our unified operating model across the region which enables speed to market. For example, we acquired 1 million customers through our digital platform UOB TMRW since its launch in 2019. In this year alone, we expect to bring in another half a million customers, of which about 70 per cent are brand-new customers.

Sim: In 2021, the focus was still very much dictated by the Covid-19 pandemic. As CEO, I made sure we continued to function well as a business whilst navigating the pandemic and its ensuing challenges. At the same time, we honed our skills and processes to ensure that we would be ready for the post-pandemic world. In 2022, the focus has shifted to growth. There are opportunities for growth and expansion in the testing, inspection and certification industry, and we are exploring how best we can embrace them.

Lou: The pandemic has made the operating environment for all companies very difficult; even more so if you want to achieve certain sales and profit targets. My key takeaway from the pandemic as CEO is the importance of corporate culture, and how it adds resilience to the company and allows us to overcome difficulties. The manufacturing sector has seen a massive shake-up during the pandemic, and many companies have gone under; I believe that as long as we can stay a winner among the increasingly fierce market competition, we can obtain more opportunities in the long run.

Q: Looking ahead, what are your thoughts on the year ahead? What are the challenges and opportunities you see for your company in the near-term and longer term? 

Wee: In the near term, my focus is to ensure we stay on track to our strategy and deliver on our key priorities, fulfilling our promise to our customers, colleagues and stakeholders. 

In the long term, my goal is to build a sustainable business with an organisational mindset and culture that is progressive; at the same time, anchored on our core values of honour, enterprise, unity and commitment, to do right by our stakeholders; so we can continue to contribute to the growth of Singapore and the region for generations to come. 

Sim: To expand our scope of services either organically or inorganically, locally or regionally, riding on opportunities created by the digital era and the sustainability movement.  

The advent of technology has opened up new opportunities for growth for us. To this end, we have increased our investments in digitalisation and rolled out new innovative products and services for our customers. This push towards digitalisation has not only improved productivity, but also reduced cost. As the growth of sustainability as a discipline gains momentum, we have increasingly looked at testing opportunities in related fields like food, construction and energy testing.

Lou: When I first took over as CEO, InnoTek had been making losses; one of my primary objectives was to turn the company and ensure profitability.Today, the company has grown significantly, and we are working on expanding our capabilities and diversifying into new fields. Implementing these new growth strategies requires not only capital, but also vision, courage and strategy as an entrepreneur, and we will focus our effort on one or two key projects which can lead InnoTek’s long-term development.

Moving forward, we expect our customer base to shift towards local Chinese customers, as Chinese customers continue to grow rapidly. Inevitably, we will face fiercer competition, and in response, will improve our management capacity, making InnoTek more resilient.