SBS Transit appoints new CEOs for core bus, rail businesses

TRANSPORT operator SBS Transit has appointed new chief executive officers (CEO) for its core bus and rail businesses, effective immediately.

Lim Tien Hock, 50, who headed the ComfortDelGro Driving Centre and ComfortDelGro MedCare as CEO, is made the CEO of the group's bus business.

Jeffrey Sim Vee Ming, 45, the head of rail development and head of the North East Line (NEL) and Sengkang Punggol LRT (SPLRT), is named CEO of its rail business.

The duo will report directly to Cheng Siak Kian, who holds overall responsibility for SBS Transit as group CEO and is concurrently the group deputy CEO of ComfortDelGro.

In a bourse filing on Friday (April 1), SBS Transit said the appointments are part of its planned succession strategy. "The moves… will further strengthen its management bench strength, and lend greater focus to its core businesses of serving the travel needs of the commuting public well," the group said.

Cheng added that with the 2 CEOs driving the core businesses, the company believes that it will be "better placed to steer ahead in a competitive business environment and provide a higher level of customer experience for our increasingly sophisticated passengers".

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SBS Transit describes Lim, who relinquishes his current posts with the appointment, as someone who is experienced in people and talent development and management and in strengthening harmonious tripartite labour-management-union relationship.

Noting that he has been with the ComfortDelGro Group since 2012, it said Lim was credited with transforming its driving centre, which was heavily reliant on manpower, to be technology-enabling and operationally-efficient.

On the other hand, Sim, a chartered engineer who has been with SBS Transit since 2015, had ensured that the Downtown Line (DTL), NEL and SPLRT achieved high levels of service reliability under his watch, SBS Transit said.

The DTL and NEL were, in fact, the top 2 best performing MRT lines in Singapore last year, it added.

Sim currently sits on the Board of the Land Transport Authority's Singapore Rail Academy. He is also an industry advisory committee member of the Singapore Institute of Technology's sustainable infrastructure engineering programme.

Apart from appointing the new CEOs, SBS Transit has also appointed Anthony Mok Peng Fai, 56, as head of NEL and SPLRT with immediate effect.

Mok, who has close to 20 years of experience in railway operations starting out as chief controller in the NEL's operations control centre, was previously head of operations for NEL and SPLRT.

In this previous capacity, Mok was heavily involved in the startup of the NEL, which started out as the world's first automated underground heavy metro system, SBS Transit said.

Shares of SBS Transit closed down 0.7 per cent or S$0.02 at S$2.97 before the announcement on Friday.