Real-estate veteran Desmond Sim quits from CEO roles at Realion, ETC

[SINGAPORE] Property industry veteran Desmond Sim has resigned from his dual roles as group chief executive of Realion and CEO of ETC.

An internal memo sent to staff on Thursday (Sep 17), seen by The Business Times, said he has stepped down from his roles and the board has accepted his resignation. His last day of service will be Oct 31, 2026.

Realion was formed in February 2025 by the merger of OrangeTee Group and ETC, previously known as Edmund Tie & Company.

“On behalf of the board, the management team and fellow colleagues, we extend our sincere appreciation to Desmond for his contributions, leadership and commitment to ETC and the Group, and we wish him every success in his future endeavours,” Realion’s board of directors said in the memo to staff.

A new leadership structure is taking shape, and is expected to be implemented in the first quarter of 2027.

In the interim, Justin Quek, deputy group CEO, will oversee the leadership and operations of Realion Group, while Christopher Ng, group chief corporate officer, will oversee ETC.

The board said the group’s strategic direction and priorities remain unchanged, and plans and initiatives already under way will continue to move forward.

The Realion Group’s biggest shareholder is the family of Roland Ng, group CEO of crane-hire giant Tat Hong and chairman of ETC. His stake is held via family investment vehicles Triplestar Capital and TH Investments.

Other shareholders include the Vogue Capital Group, an entity linked to Ken Kuik of the Kuik family behind Sim Lian Group; Springboard Capital Partners; and Tokyu Livable, a subsidiary of Tokyu Fudosan Holdings, the real-estate arm of Japanese giant Tokyu Group.

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Sim became deputy CEO in 2021

Before joining Edmund Tie as deputy CEO in 2021, Sim spent almost 20 years at CBRE and JLL in research and valuation roles.

After serving briefly as deputy CEO, he took over from then-CEO Ong Choon Fah, who had been the real-estate consulting company’s CEO since May 2015.

Quek has been CEO of OrangeTee since January 2024, returning to the company in 2023 after leaving in 2021.

While the 2025 merger combined the operations of ETC and OrangeTee under the Realion name, the two companies have ties going back more than 10 years.

They brought their sales associates’ businesses under the OrangeTee & Tie brand in 2017, with a real-estate agent salesforce of 2,645 agents today.

OrangeTee & Tie has also struck an agreement with Knight Frank, which said in July 2026 that it would shut down its real-estate agency associate business in the latest sign of consolidation among the Republic’s property agencies.

Under the agreement, KF Property Network salespersons can join OrangeTee & Tie.

Building on their ties with Tokyu Livable, OrangeTee rolled out a new initiative in 2025 pushing into Japan, giving Singapore-based investors access to Tokyu Livable’s portfolio of residential and investment-grade properties.