SINGAPORE, April 8 — Permanent Secretary for Health Chan Yeng Kit will be relinquishing his appointment and be seconded to SPH Media as chief executive officer (CEO) with effect from July 15.
The announcement today by the Public Service Division (PSD) comes less than a month after the top civil servant stepped down as chairman of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) Board on March 15 and was appointed to the board of SPH Media Holdings.
Chan, 59, will take over from the current CEO, Teo Lay Lim, who is retiring from SPH Media, said the company in a separate statement on Monday.
Teo, 60, who previously worked in the private sector, has helmed the media organisation for about two years since March 1, 2022.
The change in SPH’s leadership comes about a month after Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo revealed in Parliament that the media organisation has failed to meet a few of its key performance indicator (KPI) targets for the financial year 2023.
“Accordingly, it did not receive the full funding that was committed,” said Teo on March 1, referring to the sum of up to S$900 million (RM3.17 billion) announced in 2022 for SPH Media over a period of five years.
A long-time civil servant, Chan, started his public sector career in 1989 as an assistant director in the public service division of the Finance Ministry.
Since then, he has assumed a wide range of posts, including being seconded to the labour movement as well as to Keppel Corporation, before serving as a director at the Ministry of Trade and Industry and subsequently at the Ministry of Defence.
He was appointed CEO of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore in 2005 until 2007, and later appointed as chairman of its board in 2015. The agency was subsequently merged with the Media Development Authority in 2016 to become IMDA.
Chan rose through the ranks in civil service and was appointed by several ministries to serve as a permanent secretary in various points in his career, including in the Information, Communications and the Arts, as well as the Defence and Health Ministries.
“Yeng Kit brings a wealth of experience from his extensive career in the public sector, the labour movement, and the private sector. In his various leadership roles, he has led organisations through challenges posed by digital disruption and behavioural shifts,” said SPH Media in a statement today.
Chan said that he was thankful for the opportunity to lead “Singapore’s premier news organisation”.
“I look forward to working with my SPH Media colleagues to better serve Singapore, Singaporeans and our partners,” said the incoming CEO.
Teo, the outgoing chief of SPH Media, was former chairman of IT services and consulting firm Accenture Singapore, where she had spent 30 years in various leadership roles.
In announcing her appointment as CEO in 2022, SPH Media Trust said she was a seasoned business leader with a track record of building businesses from the ground up.
On Tuesday, Teo said: “It has been a tremendous privilege to have served SPH Media in the first lap of its transformation journey. The digital foundation is now in place, and I am confident that Yeng Kit will adeptly navigate SPH Media through the next lap.”
Khaw Boon Wan, chairman of the SPH Media Trust, said in the SPH Media statement that Chan will support the newsrooms in tapping digital platforms to reach new audiences and build a sustainable commercial model, “against the competitive pressure from social media”.
“We are grateful to Lay Lim for kick-starting our organisation’s digital transformation. Yeng Kit will build upon the foundations that she has built,” added Khaw. — TODAY
