Desmond Koh · Chief Operating Officer · Singapore / Southeast Asia
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to chair | Board Risk Committee, after a year as a member |
| Ready to join | Board Risk Committee · Remuneration Committee · Sustainability Committee |
I am looking for one independent non-executive directorship at an SGX- or Bursa Malaysia-listed company, probably with revenue between S$300 million and S$2 billion, whose results depend on a large frontline workforce or a network of physical sites. My experience transfers most directly to healthcare and residential care, facilities and security services, and logistics or cold storage. They share the problems I know: recruitment chains that reach across borders, safety that depends on tired people at the end of a shift, sites exposed to heat and flooding, and margins that look better than they are when hidden costs sit outside the accounts.
I would join a risk committee and, after a year, chair it if the board wished. I would also be useful on a remuneration committee, where frontline pay, overtime and incentives need someone who has set them. If the company were listed in Malaysia, I would complete the accreditation programme that Bursa Malaysia requires of directors of listed issuers. I am not looking for several seats, and I would not take a second while I remain an executive.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Board of directors: quarterly operating reviews, capital projects including the Senoko kitchen, and the Thai franchise reset
April 2019–present
Presents the operating review at every board meeting and leads capital proposals for operations; not a director of the company and has no vote.
Reported to a committee
Audit and Risk Committee: food safety, operational risk, business continuity and workforce welfare
April 2019–present
Reports each quarter on audit results, near-misses, recalls, border and flood continuity, and migrant-worker indicators.
Served as a director
Board of the wholly owned Malaysian subsidiary
September 2016–present
Director in an executive capacity, approving the subsidiary's accounts, Senai capital spending and employment policies, including the 2021 recruitment-fee repayment.
Served as a director
Board of a Singapore food-rescue charity; chair of its operations committee
March 2021–present
Non-executive, unpaid director; chairs the committee that oversees collection routes, cold storage and volunteer safety.
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement for independent directors of Indian companies. I am not registered with it, and it does not apply to the Singapore and Malaysian boards I am considering. If an Indian company ever approached me, I would look at what its rules required at that point rather than register in advance.
What I would offer a board is the habit of asking where a plan meets the physical world. I have spent twenty-seven years in refrigeration, milling, food manufacturing, convenience retail and food service, and in every one of them the decisive facts were found on a roof, in a lorry queue, at a stall or in a hostel rather than in the board pack. A director who has carried those facts can ask management the next question: which shift, which journey, which temperature, and who pays if it goes wrong.
I would bring particular experience of large frontline and migrant workforces. Many listed companies in this region depend on workers recruited through long chains of agents, and few boards see what those chains cost the workers or what they do to safety and retention. I have repaid recruitment fees, changed agencies and put recruitment cost into product costing, and I know which indicators show whether such a change is real.
I would also bring experience of a family-controlled listed company. At Rumbia I have recommended plans that our group CEO, a member of the founding family, did not want, including the pause in Thai expansion. Our working relationship survived because I disagreed in writing, with evidence, and accepted her conditions where they were fair.
There are also things I would not bring. I am not an accountant and would not claim the financial expertise an audit committee needs from at least one member. The Singapore Code expects a board to combine different skills and experience, and I would rather be useful in one part of that mix than adequate in all of it.
When I became COO in 2019, our quarterly food-safety report to the Audit and Risk Committee listed only incidents: illness complaints, foreign bodies and regulatory findings. It showed about twelve items a year, and the committee was reassured. I asked to add near-misses, problems caught before a product reached a customer, such as a mislabelled allergen tray stopped at dispatch or a chiller found warm before opening. The first full year produced 140 entries, and the committee's chair asked whether our safety had suddenly deteriorated. It had not; we were simply looking. Within two years near-misses were the most discussed page in the report, and two changes to our labelling process came directly from them. On another board I would ask early whether management reports what nearly happened, because a report of incidents alone tells directors about luck.
In March 2024 a filling supplier changed a recipe to include sesame without telling us, and a bun sold in our Malaysian bakeries carried a label that did not declare it. Our head of food safety found the error on a Friday. Some colleagues wanted to wait until we had traced every affected batch. I supported her recommendation to withdraw the product from all 77 Malaysian outlets that evening, publish a notice and inform the authorities, although we did not yet know how many customers had bought it. We later established that four batches were affected and no illness was reported. The supplier's contract now requires notice of any formulation change. As a director, I would test how long bad news takes to travel from the floor to a decision, and whether anyone is rewarded for waiting until the facts are tidy.
In 2023 a proposal reached our board to make all Laman Food Halls cashless, saving about S$700,000 a year in cash handling. I supported the direction but recommended against a complete switch in the halls in older housing estates, where our own data showed that more than a quarter of transactions at breakfast were still in cash, many of them by elderly customers. The board agreed to go cashless in 17 halls and keep a single cash point in the other 12, reviewed every year. It cost us part of the saving. The judgement I would bring to another board is that an efficient change can still exclude the customers a business was built to serve, and that the data to see this usually already exists.
Before my first meeting I would complete any training the exchange requires of a first-time director of a listed company, and I would ask the company secretary for the board calendar, the last two years of board and committee minutes and the risk register.
Then I would go and look. I would ask to see the business at its most demanding hour: a ward at the night handover, a warehouse at the morning dispatch, a cleaning crew at the end of a shift, whichever applies. I would meet the heads of operations, safety, human resources and internal audit separately, and ask each the same question: what do you know that the board does not see often enough? I would also want to meet a sample of frontline workers without their managers present, with the chair's agreement.
For the rest of the year I would keep a written list of the questions I asked and the answers I received, and check after each meeting whether the answers changed anything. I would not try to lead a committee in that first year. At its end I would ask the chair and the nominating committee whether my questions had been useful.
Three kinds of company are closed to me while I work at Rumbia. The first is any business that competes with us in bakeries, cafés, food halls or packaged food in Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand. The second is any business on the other side of our contracts: our landlords, including the trusts and developers that own the malls where we trade, our flour, dairy and packaging suppliers, the delivery platforms we sell through and the recruitment agencies we use. The third is any company connected to the Seow family's other interests. I would also decline a seat at a company that Lantern Table relies on for donations.
I would seek Rumbia's board approval before accepting any directorship, disclose my shareholding and both of my current directorships in full, and ask the company to check its own supplier and customer lists against Rumbia's.
If a conflict arose after appointment, for example because Rumbia began to buy services from the company, I would tell the chair at once, leave the room for any related discussion and step down if the relationship looked lasting. Time is the conflict I control most directly, so I would fix dates a year ahead and hold to about twenty-four days.
I am an executive of Rumbia and hold its shares under the group's performance share plan, so I could never be counted independent of Rumbia, its subsidiaries or its controlling family. For any other company, I would list every relationship that might matter, including my shareholding, my Malaysian subsidiary directorship, my charity board and any dealings between that company and Rumbia's suppliers, landlords or platforms. Whether I can be regarded as independent there is a judgement for its nominating committee and board under the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance or the Malaysian code and the exchange's rules, and I would accept their view.