SGX chair says company count outdated, capital flow key

He described privatisation as a rational and often healthy outcome.

The number of listed companies in Singapore has become an outdated metric of success, Singapore Exchange chairman Koh Boon Hwee said, arguing that capital flow matters more than headcount on the exchange.

Koh pointed to global private equity and venture capital, which he said have grown dramatically over two decades, as a reason the simple count no longer reflects market health.

He described privatisation as a rational and often healthy outcome rather than a tragedy, and as evidence that capital is being recycled.

For a listed company with limited growth prospects, low trading liquidity and persistently low valuations, going private is a sensible path, he said, adding that an exchange should not preserve its company count for its own sake.

“Mergers, acquisitions, listings and privatisations should be viewed as temporary phases in a larger cycle,” Koh said.

He added that private-equity ownership is rarely the end of the funding cycle, with companies later sold, acquired or returned to public markets as larger enterprises.

“The objective is a dynamic capital ecosystem in which businesses access the most appropriate funding at each stage, and capital is recycled into the next generation of opportunities”.

For younger investors, Koh said the path to long-term financial independence lies in moving from savers to owners and from day traders to long-term investors.

“This depends less on timing the market than on compounding savings and sharing directly in the growth of the wider economy”.