Suppiah Dhanabalan

Chairman, Temasek Holdings and DBS

Date of Birth: 08/08/1937

In the elite circles of Singaporean business, certain names frequently recur. Suppiah ‘S’ Dhanabalan, Chairman of Temasek Holdings, the investment arm of the Singapore government, is one of them. Born in 1937, of Tamil Indian descent, he took a B.A. in economics from the University of Malaya and joined the Ministry of Finance in 1960. He served seven years on the government’s Economic Development Board, during a time when Singapore was desperately courting foreign investment. In 1968, he became a Vice-President at DBS Bank, where he stayed for a decade. His political career began in 1978 as a member of parliament and he later held ministerial posts, including Foreign Affairs, National Development, and Trade and Industry.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s veteran Prime Minister, considered Dhanabalan for his successor; others on Lee’s list included Tony Tan (GIC Executive Director) and Goh Chok Tong, who became the second Prime Minister in 1990. Dhanabalan left politics in 1994; years later, in an interview with the Straits Times, he mentioned ‘differences which I felt I could not live with’. Though he left government behind, he did not move far from his colleagues. By 1996, he was on the board of the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore, alongside Prime Minister Lee and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, as well as Goh and Tan.