From living ‘hand to mouth’ to being ‘old friends’ with Ray Dalio: Ng Kok Song’s path to presidential hopeful

“Do you like my jacket?”

Ng Kok Song, a candidate for Singapore’s presidency, is gamely sporting a black leather jacket as he arrives at the Tech in Asia office for his interview. He says “my friend Jensen Huang,” co-founder and CEO of chips giant Nvidia, was his inspiration for this sartorial choice.

That aside, Ng doesn’t exactly have the profile of a tech startup founder. The 75-year-old, who describes himself as a “pioneer of the Singapore finance sector,” spent 15 years at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city-state’s central bank and financial regulator. That was followed by 27 years at sovereign wealth fund GIC, where he was group chief investment officer in his final six years.

Ng was also on the board of government-owned investment company Temasek Holdings for two years.

But Ng is no stranger to the struggles founders face. Having left GIC in 2013, he founded Avanda Investment Management, a global asset management company, where he currently serves as executive chair.

He also speaks the language of the tech community. According to Ng, Singapore’s first generation of political leaders, such as Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee, were “venture capitalists on a national scale,” taking risks to build successful companies like banking giant DBS and national carrier Singapore Airlines.

Nevertheless, his profile paints a picture of someone who has very much been a part of the Singapore establishment. That said, he stresses that he was “never a member of the People’s Action Party,” the ruling party that has dominated politics in Singapore since the country’s independence.

This stands in contrast to one of his rivals for the Singapore presidency, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who capped off a storied political career by serving as the nation’s deputy prime minister and senior minister.

I was not just a policymaker. I was the moneymaker

Ng should know Tharman well, with the latter having served on the GIC board for over 19 years.

Asked what sets him apart from his rivals, Tharman and George Goh (an entrepreneur who has spent his entire career in the private sector), Ng notes his combination of both public and private sector experience.

“Buy IBM” mentality

Hand to mouth

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