Rizal Teo · Chief Strategy Officer · Singapore / Southeast Asia
Presented to the Board or a committee
Board investment committee; full board for annual strategy reviews
March 2021–present
Presents route, terminal, fleet and acquisition cases as chief strategy officer, including post-decision reviews; not a director of the company.
Served as a director
Board of directors; operations and safety committee
June 2023–present
Non-independent director nominated by Banagra Sealink to the terminal joint venture with a provincial government; owes duties to the joint-venture company itself.
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to join | Risk oversight · Investment and capital projects · Sustainability |
I am looking for a first independent seat on the board of a listed or substantial private company in the Philippines or Singapore whose business depends on long-lived transport or infrastructure assets: an airport or port services company, a logistics or tourism group with island operations, a utility, or an industrial distributor running a heavy fleet. I would value a chair who wants a director to examine capital commitments and public partnerships closely, and who will tell me where my experience is narrow. For a Philippine listed company, I would work within the independence and tenure expectations of the corporate governance code that the Securities and Exchange Commission applies to listed companies; in Singapore, the Code of Corporate Governance. I can offer about twenty-two days a year, including preparation and site visits. I am not seeking an advisory title, and I would decline a seat whose main purpose was to give the company a ferry operator's contacts.
I would bring a board the habit of looking at capital, public obligations and timing in one frame. Transport and infrastructure companies in our region spend long-lived money under short-lived political and commercial conditions: a ship lasts thirty years, a concession twenty-five and a provincial administration three. Board papers often treat those horizons separately. I would ask how an investment behaves if a partner changes, a route weakens or fuel moves, and what the company would do if it had to leave. I would also ask who is left without service when a business decision is sensible on its own terms, because that question tends to return later as regulatory and reputational cost. I have not served as an independent director. My board experience comes from presenting to our investment committee and from a nominee seat on a joint venture, so I would expect to start as a committee member. Risk oversight and an investment or capital-projects committee fit my experience best, and I could contribute to a sustainability committee on fleet and fuel questions. I would not claim financial-reporting expertise beyond what I have used to build investment cases.
In 2023 the owners of Tolvares Shipping Lines, a family operator with six vessels and nine routes, offered us their company for ₱1.3 billion. Its routes complemented ours, and our president saw a chance to consolidate a fragmented corridor. Diligence found that two vessels needed about ₱400 million of steel renewal and that crew certification records were incomplete on three ships. I recommended withdrawing rather than negotiating the price down, because a lower price would not have made the ships or the records safer, and owning them would have made their condition our responsibility the next morning. The board agreed. A year later Tolvares reduced its services, and we hired forty of its seafarers after our own checks. On any board I would ask the same of an acquisition: what liability arrives on the first day, and is the price really the place to settle it?
In 2024 city officials asked us to restore one of the overnight routes we had closed, offering a fare subsidy for two years. The proposal was well meant and politically attractive, and our commercial director supported it. I advised the board that the subsidy would end long before a replacement vessel could earn its cost, and that a second withdrawal would damage trust more than the first. We proposed instead a through fare using our short crossings and shared timetable and connection information with the operator that had added overnight sailings. The city accepted part of that offer. The lesson I would carry into board work is direct: when a public partner offers help, does the help last as long as the commitment it asks the company to make? If not, directors should see the gap in writing before they approve anything.
My first months would be spent listening before commenting. I would read the last three years of board and committee minutes, the strategy and capital plan, the principal risk register and any regulatory correspondence the chair considers relevant. I would ask to visit the operations that hold most of the company's capital, whether a terminal, a depot, a fleet or a plant, and to meet the managers who run them. By the second quarter I would expect to understand which three or four investments define the company's next decade and how the board follows them after approval. Within the year I would hope to have added a useful question to at least one major decision, and I would ask the chair for direct feedback on whether I had. I would also keep a short note of what I did not know when I joined, so that I could judge later whether I had learnt it.
My conflicts are concrete, and I would list them before any discussion. I am an executive of Banagra Sealink, a nominee director of its terminal joint venture and a regular counterparty of shipyards, fuel suppliers, insurers, banks and provincial governments. Halvenbridge Infrastructure Partners, our minority shareholder, invests in other transport and port businesses, and some of them could compete with or supply a company I joined. I would not join the board of another ferry operator in our waters, nor of a port or shipyard with which Banagra negotiates. Where a relationship is smaller, I would disclose it, leave the room when it is discussed and accept that some matters will proceed without me. If those absences touched the board's main decisions, I would decline the seat. Banagra's board would have to consent before I accepted, and I would tell both chairs promptly about any change in my circumstances.
I would not regard myself as independent of any company that competes with, supplies or negotiates with Banagra Sealink or its shareholders. For any other company, I would set out my interests in writing and accept the board's assessment, made with its advisers against the applicable code, before describing myself as independent.
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian register. It does not apply to the Philippine and Singapore appointments I am considering, and I have not registered. If an Indian appointment were ever proposed, I would take advice and complete whatever that market requires.