A study of Public Control and Corporate Governance mechanisms of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Singapore

In the decades following its independence, Singapore experienced a transformative time of rapid economic development. Professor Miyuki Nakamura, who is based at the Faculty of Business Administration, Soka University in Japan, is investigating the unique factors that enabled Singapore to flourish. She is focusing on the strategic role of Temasek, which transformed itself from a company with a holding function to a successful sovereign wealth fund (SWF) through privatisation and a change in its investment strategy. She is shedding light on the company’s transformation, its role in Singapore’s economy and the insights this can provide. At present, she is looking at the relationship between control and ownership within public corporations, which involves an examination of the governance structure of Temasek. She is also exploring the broader government initiative that enabled the formation of a corporate state under Temasek’s control. She will shed light on Singapore’s unique capitalist economic system by analysing the relationship between the free economic system and Singaporean-style authoritarian politics and the mechanisms that transformed it into state capitalism. A key part of the research is securities finance and corporate governance theory and how they can shape the performance and strategy of companies. In one comparative economic research project, Nakamura investigated the structure of Singapore’s economic system from an evolving perspective of previous research. This involved comparative research with researchers specialising in the economies of Russia (Dr Vitor Gorshkov from the University of Niigata Prefecture), China (Dr Takuma Kobayashi from Matsuyama University) and Germany (Dr Mihoko Satogami from Soka University).