Rolling up sleeves to take over the family business

BOSSES' sons may not typically begin their first day of work at their father's company inside a sweltering metal shipping container in Jurong Island with a just-broken-down air conditioner and shirtless men. Benson Tan, 35, who took over as chief executive officer of mainboard-listed logistics group Cogent Holdings in 2015, still wryly remembers that day 14 years ago.

"I won't call it a baptism of fire, but you get into the fray," he says, in an interview in late January at The Grandstand, a mall in Bukit Timah that Cogent became the master-tenant of in 2012. "You have to roll up your sleeves, sometimes take off your clothes."

He was 21 at that time, fresh out of National Service, and spent about three years in the company's transportation business based in Jurong Island, following truck drivers on their trips and visit…