Khaw Boon Wan, the long-time Mr Fix-It for Singapore's PM, will lead new SPH Media Holdings

The Singaporean government on Monday said Khaw Boon Wan, a retired ruling party stalwart and an acclaimed "Mr Fix-It" for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, will be chairman of the new non-profit entity that will own the country's main newspaper publisher.

S. Iswaran, the communications and information minister, told parliament that management shareholders of the publicly listed Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and the government backed 68-year-old Khaw for the job. Iswaran said the former minister was held in "high standing" at home and abroad.

"He has a proven track record of taking on difficult issues and working on them," he said. "And this is one such issue."

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Khaw, a former People's Action Party (PAP) chairman, will lead SPH Media Holdings, the new parent company for SPH's loss-making media businesses. The transfer is part of a long-term strategy of sustainably stewarding titles such as the 176-year-old The Straits Times and the Chinese-language Lianhe Zaobao.

The shake-up is also the most dramatic reorganisation of Singapore's media industry in more than 30 years and has been a major talking point since SPH announced the plan last Thursday.

The government also last week pledged to contribute funding to the new non-profit SPH Media. Singapore's mainstream media has for decades maintained links with the long-ruling PAP and state funding of the media is not new. MediaCorp, the national broadcaster, is owned by state investor Temasek Holdings and also receives taxpayer funds.

But the government's willingness to directly fund the previously commercially owned SPH media outlets has raised questions among commentators about the effects on press freedom.

Singapore has for years scored poorly in international press freedom rankings, and researchers say a range of policies and laws, including the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (NPPA), ensure local media is subordinate to the government.

In his remarks, however, Iswaran repeatedly invoked surveys by the likes of Edelman and YouGov that he said showed Singaporeans' high trust in local news media. The growth of the reach and readership of SPH titles online and in print "in aggregate" supported this point, Iswaran said.

"That would not be the case if Singaporeans do not feel that they could trust the news organisation," he said. "So I think the people have spoken, and I think it is our job now to make sure the object of their trust continues to succeed."

The minister also pushed back against concerns among the opposition about Khaw's appointment as SPH Media's new chairman.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Photo: Reuters alt=Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Photo: Reuters

The Malaysian-born Khaw was among Prime Minister Lee's most trusted lieutenants during a 19-year stint in government that ended last year.

During his tenure, Khaw was dispatched to deal with hot-button issues including a public housing crunch in the late 2000s and to fix the country's beleaguered metro network in the mid-2010s.

Workers' Party MP Sylvia Lim asked whether SPH management shareholders had missed an opportunity to appoint a chairman "not so closely linked" with the PAP government. In response, Iswaran noted SPH's precedent of chairmen who were former ministers or senior civil servants.

"We are where we are today in terms of the credibility of our media, the trust that Singaporeans have in our media, through this array of leadership," Iswaran said.

The NPPA stipulates that newspaper companies must allocate shares with super-voting status, or management shares, to some shareholders - to be approved by the government.

Iswaran on Monday said the current management shareholders were OCBC Bank, the Singapore-based insurers Great Eastern and NTUC Income, United Overseas Bank, DBS Bank, Singtel, the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University and state investor Temasek Holdings via its subsidiary Fullerton Private Limited.

Later, pressed by the Workers' Party chief Pritam Singh about whether the government would appoint a parliamentary select committee over public expectations regarding state funding of SPH Media, Iswaran accused the opposition leader of "making political capital out of something that I think is quite fundamentally important to us".

The minister said he could not yet provide details on the scale of government funding for SPH Media, adding that the matter would be raised in parliament once plans were finalised.

SPH in its statement last week said it would provide S$80 million (US$60 million) of cash and S$30 million of shares to the new non-profit entity, which would also seek funding from public and private sources.

SPH has a range of property investments encompassing local shopping centres as well as overseas student accommodation and retirement homes. But due to falling revenue from its media assets and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, SPH last year posted its first full-year loss on record - based on data compiled by Bloomberg - after consecutive years of shrinking net income. In response, it cut about 140 jobs or 5 per cent of its workforce last August.

Iswaran said the terms of the proposed spin-off mean "the entire team [will] move over and therefore no attrition is intended".

The plan can go ahead only after a vote in an extraordinary general meeting, to be held in July or August. Given management shareholders support the plan, the vote is likely to be a formality.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.