Although Temasek Holdings manages our state reserves and should be transparent, the PAP government has legislated senior management executives’ remuneration state secret.
From how PAP runs our country as Singapore Inc, ie pegging ministerial/civil service remuneration to top earners in the private sector, albeit with a discount, Temasek’s top executives such as CEO Ho Ching must be paid humongous salaries.
This is because Temasek Holdings (Private) Ltd and GLCs are considered to be private sector companies.
Therefore, CEO Ho Ching’s pay must have been pegged to top earners in the industry without any discount.
Just how much Ho is paid from our reserves will continue to be a $100 million question until transparency sees daylight, ie after PAP is booted out.
One thing for certain, Ho is unlikely to be paid lower than CEOs under her charge. Last year, the highest paid GLC CEO was Piyush Gupta of DBS Group who took home $10.3 million.
Assuming the recent new citizen had worked 365 days last year, Gupta was earning $28,219 daily.
But as the CEO of a $275 billion SWF with heavy responsibilities, it will be a slap in Ho’s face to be earning the same pay as new citizen Gupta’s $28,219 a day.
When Temasek approached Charles Goodyear to be its CEO in 2009, Charles was one of the ten highest-paid CEOs in the UK and US the previous year.
Logically, Charles must have been offered more than his $54 million salary to quit BHP Billiton.
Conservatively assuming Ho was earning $54 million then and had worked without any break, this works out to $147,945 a day or about 25 times of the PM’s salary.
Obviously, Ho is currently earning much more as Temasek’s doubling in portfolio value has been often credited to her efforts. A conservative estimate: Ho currently earns about $300,000 a day.
To put Ho Ching’s pay into perspective, ordinary Singaporeans need to slog about a decade to earn the same amount PM Lee’s wife earns in a day.
Whichever way Singaporeans look at it, Ho’s humongous remuneration should not be state secret as the money from our reserves belongs to all Singaporeans.
Over to you, Temasek. 😉
likedatosocanmeh 
Not only hers, what about the Chairman and other executive board members? If hers is 100m, the others can’t be very far off.
Likewise, what about GIC?
How many thousands of GLCs are there under our Temasek and GIC? Malaysia has ten of thousands of GLCs, what can we expect from ours?
Good question the high cost of living is due to the extravagant 8nfrastructure projects and TemasK/GIC execs high salaries. Don’t be shocked if the total salaries are 1 billion without the bonuses and 2 with them. And 3 if you throw in bonuses plus sitting on multipe boards doing nothing but casing cheques there
Our 1MDBs will dwarf Najib-gate.
Yup.
We badly need a Lim Guan Eng and Mahathir to look into the state of hidden affairs here in Singapore……I will not be surprise if our government had done more ridiculous things than Najib.
Najib took control of 1MDB since 2009 and had billions in debt a few years later. PAP has concealed information for decades and the amounts involved in GIC and Temasek are many times bigger. For example, if land sales revenue and CPF are managed by GIC, new funds will exceed $40 billion this year.
Fact that all tweaks lead to more funds for GIC suggest something is amiss. Allegations of wrongdoing have also not been addressed by the government with more transparency but on its own ‘Factually’ website. There’s a possibility of revelations sinking our country because investor confidence is based on state propaganda.
Rubbish! Where did you get info that land sales revenue is managed by Temasek? Please show evidence as this would be of great interest to all Singaporesns. Otherwise you are just hate mongering!
Hi Daniel. Thanks for your comments.
Please note that I wrote “For example, if land sales revenue and CPF are managed by GIC, new funds … No mention of Temasek. 😉
Not to worry, everyone makes mistakes.
Goodthing ..they are legally corrupt ..
The assumptions given are very reasonable conjecture of Ho Ching probable salaries. In the absence of transparency, this is probably the best estimates.
Paul Yeo
🙂
Pay me one million a year and I will be happy to lose billions of dollars for the nation every year. It’s an easy job. Why pay her so much when I can do it. I volunteer.
Sorry. Very long queue for the same task at way below $1 million. 😉
With all the top experts in Temasek/GIC, it is not likely that billions can be lost so easily. This super smart crooks just create fake losses which are then siphoned through third party proxies into their secret coffers hidden somewhere in the world.
I am not so optimistic when GIC and Temasek could speculate in banks during the GFC without knowing the toxic assets on their books. Your ‘top experts’ are mostly scholars who have not worked a single day in the real private sector, gambling with unlimited tax dollars.
And they are easy meat for Wall Street crooks, real ones. 😉
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