My contribution to a board
What I would offer a board is a working knowledge of the place where many consumer companies' risks now begin: the claim. I have seen claims made at a department-store counter, from a distributor's van, in translated advertising, on a sachet strip and in a three-hour livestream, and for seven years I have decided which of them Lumarind will stand behind. Boards usually meet these risks late, as a complaint or a regulator's letter; I can help them see the risks earlier, because I know where they are produced and which measures reveal them.
I would also bring pricing judgement for lower-income shoppers, rarer in boardrooms than it should be in a region where so much consumer revenue is earned a coin at a time, and experience of a family-controlled listed company, where the family's instincts and minority shareholders' interests usually align and occasionally do not.
The Singapore Code of Corporate Governance expects a board to include enough independent directors to bring objective judgement, with committees for audit, nominating and remuneration matters; SGX's sustainability reporting rules make the board responsible for the material environmental, social and governance factors on which the company reports. My natural place is a sustainability committee, or a risk committee whose remit covers conduct and product claims. Accounting is not my discipline, so on an audit committee I would be a careful reader of the numbers rather than its finance specialist.
Lastly, I put my disagreements in writing. At Lumarind I have opposed my chief executive, my chief financial officer and, once, our executive chairman, each time in a paper that priced the alternative. All three relationships survived, I think because each disagreement was specific.
My first year on a board
I would organise my first year around three questions and tell the chair at the outset what they were.
The first is where this company's promises to its customers are made. I would want to see how its advertising is approved, its complaints by channel, any creator programme and the evidence behind its best-sellers' claims, and I would ask management to take me where the board pack does not reach: a distributor, a shop, a session being broadcast.
The second is what its sustainability report commits it to, and who owns each commitment. I would read three years of reports beside the minutes of the committee that approved them, and ask the people responsible for each measure how it is collected and checked.
The third is how the board itself disagrees. I would read the minutes for decisions where the board changed management's recommendation, and ask the chair privately how dissent is usually expressed. At the end of the year I would ask the chair and my committee chair whether my questions had helped. I would rather hear that they had not than keep asking them.
Conflicts and their management
I see three kinds of conflict, and I would settle each before accepting a seat rather than after.
The commercial kind is the easiest to state. I would not join the board of any company that makes or sells hair, skin or body care or cosmetics in our markets, any supplier of our surfactants, fragrances or packaging, any agency we use, or any retailer, distributor or marketplace that sells a material share of our products. That rules out most pharmacy and beauty chains.
The second concerns information. As Lumarind's CMO I know our pricing plans, promotions and consumer research. I would keep another board's confidential information apart from my executive work, and step out of any discussion where what I know from one company could shape the other's commercial decisions.
The third is time and loyalty. My first duty is to Lumarind, whose board must consent to any appointment, and whose half-yearly results and quarterly business reviews fall in the same weeks as many companies' meetings, so I would fix the calendar a year ahead. I would disclose my Lumarind shareholding, my Indonesian commissioner's seat and my immediate family's interests before appointment, and any later relationship as soon as it arose, leaving the discussion and offering to resign if it seemed likely to recur.
My independence statement
I am an executive of Lumarind and hold its shares, mostly through its performance share plan. I have no family connection with Lumarind's founding family or with any company I would consider joining. Whether I am independent of a particular company is for its nominating committee and board to decide, under the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance or the equivalent rules where it is listed. My part is to give them a complete account of my interests and relationships, including those of my immediate family, and to update it whenever anything changes.
Judgement in practice
01A sun-protection claim corrected before anyone asked
In 2023 a routine retest of an Embunsari day cream labelled SPF 30 gave a result in the low twenties at a new laboratory, although two earlier tests had supported the label. Our group chief executive preferred a third test before acting, which would take six weeks. I recommended relabelling at once, holding the Malaysian shipment in transit and informing the regulator ourselves, because a sun-protection figure is a health claim in all but name. The Audit and Risk Committee agreed. It cost about S$800,000; the third test supported SPF 25, which the pack now states. As a director I would ask not whether a claim is probably right, but what being wrong for six weeks would cost.
02An agency contract from the founding family's side
In 2021 a production company owned by a relative of the founding family bid for Teduhwangi's advertising production. It was capable and competitively priced, but its ownership brought any contract within SGX's rules on interested person transactions, which require proper review and, above certain thresholds, disclosure or shareholder approval. I recommended splitting the work into three lots, tendering each against unconnected firms and sending the evaluation to the Audit and Risk Committee before award. The family-owned company won one lot at a price inside the range of the other bids. Our executive chairman later called the process slower than necessary and its outcome easier to defend than she expected. On a board I would ask to see the losing bids as well as the winning one.
03A packaging pledge narrowed before publication
Drafting our 2022 sustainability report, the team proposed committing that all Lumarind packaging would be recyclable by 2025. I argued at the Sustainability Committee that readers would take recyclability to mean recycling, which we could not deliver where our sachets are used, and that a published pledge outlives the executives who write it. The committee adopted two narrower measures: the share of our packaging by weight made from one polymer, and the tonnage of flexible packaging collected through programmes we fund, each reported with its method. They looked less impressive and are far easier to audit. On any board I would ask whether a published commitment describes something the company controls.