January 15, 2003
SingTel boss Lee Hsien Yang has hit some slippery slopes following his company's purchase of Optus, notes Eric Ellis.
Singapore Telecommunications' youthful boss, Lee Hsien Yang, took some time out from stewarding his struggling company, which owns Australia's Optus network, to catch some air at Canada's chi-chi Whistler ski resort over Christmas.
There in his dinky yellow ski suit and toque, Lee would have found Whistler a welcome respite from steamy Singapore, where he has endured a difficult year stewarding the poster company of Singapore Inc. And as he and his teenage son zipped down runs such as Doom and Gloom and Ego Bowl, he might have reflected on how his company's share price has headed seriously off-piste of late.
SingTel Optus shares have raced downhill since Lee bought Optus for $14bn in 2001, and while he was enjoying the snow, the stock touched record lows of $1.19, a long way from the near $3 when Lee waved SingTel paper and promises at Optus shareholders in May 2001. Getting Australians on the SingTel register was a cunning Sing Inc plan to answer critics that the Singapore government owns too much of its economy: 65% of SingTel at last count. But that plan has proved, in parlance the skiing Lee might understand, as tricky as a double black diamond run.
Not that Lee attracts too much criticism in Singapore, not publicly at least. He's the youngest son of Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore political hard man whose position as Senior Minister still allows him to wield unprecedented influence in the city-state. He brooks little dissent, which may help explain why Lee fils' $20bn spending spree helming government-controlled SingTel into risky plays in Australia, Indonesia and underseas goes largely unremarked in Singapore's government-controlled media.