Introduction
Mr Speaker, I would like to give notice that the honourable Member Jamus Lim is also keen to speak on the Motion standing in my name under Standing Order 2(8)(b). I therefore propose to share the 20 minutes of speaking time allotted to me with him. May I proceed as proposed, Speaker?
Thank you, Speaker. Allow me to first declare that I’m an equity analyst working in a financial institution in Singapore.
On that note Mr Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue that is very close to my heart, the future of Singapore's equities market, and by extension Singapore’s role as a global financial centre. Through this adjournment motion, I hope we can make Singapore equities great again. For more than a decade, I worked as a sell-side equity analyst and observed a continual decline in the vibrancy of our capital markets. We witnessed S-chip crises, market shrinkage as de-listings far outstripped new IPOs, and the painful erosion of investor confidence. Our market liquidity had fallen behind not just global bourses, but even regional neighbours. Every day, this trend affected real lives and livelihoods across our capital markets ecosystem.
In 2024, I put forward a parliamentary question on this very issue. The Government's reply, though well-intentioned, felt insufficient. It lacked the boldness needed to reverse decades of decline, with PM Wong sharing that conditions remain challenging for the Singapore equities market, as they are for stock exchanges in other countries. But thankfully, that has changed. I welcome the Government's markedly stronger resolve and putting on record my appreciation to the Equities Market Review Group for its work. In particular, I appreciate that the S$5 billion EQDP funding demonstrates genuine commitment, and I hope this will not be a one-off measure.
That said, as I have shared in my COS speech in February 2025, our measures must be bold enough to bring our equity markets into the future. However, I believe that the current recommendations by the review group may be necessary but not sufficient to truly drive permanent change. The two workstreams appear to be focused on reducing market friction, rather than instituting structural interventions that improve company fundamentals in the long term. Without three critical additional pillars, we risk repeating a familiar pattern, with Thailand's Vayupak programme providing a cautionary tale.
Current challenges
Let me first establish the scale of Singapore's challenge, which my learned colleague Kenneth Tiong had earlier shared in his speech on the Finance Bill. Putting aside the comparison with other western developed markets, as of end-January 2026, 61% of SGX companies generated return on equity below 8%, compared to 44% in Japan and 24% in Korea. Too many of our companies are delivering uncompetitive returns. On liquidity, the difference is even more stark. Only 14 SGX-listed companies have daily trading volume above twenty million US dollars. Japan has 305. Korea has 172. Hong Kong has 160.
But perhaps most telling is this: based on research from early 2025, 69% of Singapore-listed companies have shrunk in market capitalisation over the past decade. In Japan, that figure is only 14%. Only 11% of our companies have doubled their market cap in ten years, compared to 50% in Japan. It appears the odds are not quite in your favour when looking at investment outcomes in Singapore!
Pillar one: Institute a real value-up programme for Singapore-listed companies
Now, the Review Group's report states that: "Companies that invest in building strategic shareholder value and communicate their plans effectively will attract stronger investor interest." This is precisely correct.
But here is the critical gap. The report contains no mandatory disclosure requirements compelling companies to demonstrate improved shareholder returns. An EQDP fund manager told The Edge Singapore in December 2025: “At the end of the day, what we are looking for is earnings growth, ROIC going up, ROE going up. That’s really what our main focus is”. Yet our framework offers no mechanism to compel disclosed commitments toward these fundamentals.
As I have shared in my COS speech in February 2025, Japan and Korea have already shown the way. They did not rely on voluntarism; they implemented market-wide directives creating existential pressure on companies to perform.
In the case of Japan, in March 2023, the TSE issued formal requests to companies to act on what they call "management conscious of cost of capital and stock price." This was not a good-to-have, but a structured disclosure framework with specific requirements. The TSE published a monthly list of companies by their disclosure status, creating constructive market pressure. Within a year, more than half of Prime companies have disclosed initiatives, and that is now above ninety percent. And here is the crucial part: companies that put genuine effort into high-quality disclosures outperformed their peers by meaningful margins over the subsequent twelve months.
Korea's Value-Up programme, launched February 2024, requires companies to assess capital efficiency, set quantified ROE and ROIC targets, and disclose dividend and treasury share plans. Korea has also amended its Commercial Act to expand directors' fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and directors themselves have to be accountable now.
Turning to Singapore, while the “value unlock” programme aims to promote value creation and shareholder engagement, the key measure to achieve this is a S$30 million grant. Perhaps small and newly listed companies may be able to benefit, but for the vast majority of companies, they can very much maintain the status quo after the review group’s recommendations are implemented. Companies face no additional disclosure or regulatory requirements to demonstrate how exactly they are going to drive higher shareholder returns or unlock value. While we are asking the EQDP fund managers to deploy more than S$5 billion in capital and expect returns, our listed companies feel no compulsion to demonstrate commitment to improving fundamentals.
What must Singapore do? We must institute mandatory value-up disclosure requirements immediately. At the most basic level, all listed companies should conduct formal board-level assessments of capital costs, profitability, and market valuation. Companies must then disclose quantified ROE and ROIC targets across medium to long term time horizons and spell out specific plans with annual progress reporting.
Pillar two: Strengthen corporate governance and enforcement actions
But disclosure alone is not sufficient. We must also strengthen enforcement. The review group states, “Efforts to enhance investor recourse avenues must be complemented by robust public enforcement actions. MAS will continue to work with relevant authorities to pursue and take firm actions against wrongdoers”. I agree.
I understand the government's perspective that value creation is the responsibility of boards and management, not regulators. Regulators should not micromanage. But regulators have to maintain standards that protect investor confidence, ensure fair and timely disclosure, and enforce meaningfully against wrongdoers.
To quote remarks By Mr Lim Tuang Lee, Assistant Managing Director at the MAS at the SGTI Forum in 2025, “Too many companies here limit themselves to the bare minimum disclosure requirements, and in doing so, miss the opportunity to articulate strategic visions and plans.”
My concern is that even where minimum requirements exist, companies ignore them. SGX rules require disclosure of director and CEO remuneration since January 2023. Yet only 68 percent disclosed exact remuneration by December 2024. Without consequences for non-compliance, why would companies comply? And it is hard to blame companies for refusing to comply, after all, the stewards of our national reserves, Temasek and GIC do not have mandatory remuneration disclosures at all.
I welcome the MAS announcement in May 2025 that a committee is reviewing the Code of Corporate Governance. I hope that the refreshed code can hold companies accountable for disclosure lapses to instil investor confidence in our governance regime.
On a related note, the review group advocates for a "decisive shift" toward a disclosure-based regime, streamlining prospectus requirements and consolidating listing reviews under SGX RegCo to improve time-to-market. While reducing regulatory friction is pro-enterprise, it raises concerns about investor protection.
I am reminded of my own experience being a sell side analyst covering Noble Group, back when Iceberg Research wrote an expose on alleged accounting fraud at the commodities trader. In 2022, after years of investigation into Noble’s disclosures, MAS imposed a S$12.6 million civil penalty. Although the case was undoubtedly complicated, one can’t help but feel that the penalties handed down were noticeably disproportionate to the billions investors lost alongside the company’s downfall.
Section 199 of the SFA requires not merely that a material statement or information was false or misleading, but that the wrongdoer either does not care whether it was true or false or knows or ought reasonably to have known that the statement or information is false or misleading in a material way. Firstly, this is a high bar and secondly, perhaps as the Noble Group case has shown, and as I have shared in my parliamentary question in 2022, there perhaps ought to be more robust disclosure obligations and enforcement actions relating to false and misleading statements and breaches of disclosure requirements.
Allow me to pass the time to my colleague Jamus Lim, who will take us through his thoughts on a third pillar, premised on macro financial reform.
