How does your company ensure that the interests of various stakeholders – such as shareholders, employees, and the community – are considered in your governance framework?
Tan: CICT’s corporate governance framework is designed to ensure that the interests of all stakeholders, including investors, employees, tenants, shoppers, suppliers and communities, are carefully considered. For investors, regular updates on CICT’s performance are provided at annual general meetings (AGMs). The company also engages extensively with both retail and institutional investors through various channels, including group meetings and investor conferences..
Meanwhile, employees benefit from a high-performance work culture that values diversity and teamwork, supported by regular staff communications, engagement programmes, and training. For tenants and shoppers, CICT maintains high tenant retention through proactive engagement and digital platforms such as CapitaStar that enhance tenant and shopper experiences. The company also fosters strong supplier relationships by ensuring fairness and recognising excellence in service quality, with 100 per cent of its supply chain adhering to the CapitaLand Investment Supply Chain Code of Conduct.
Finally, CICT is committed to community engagement, actively participating in sustainability initiatives and social programmes, including pursuing green certifications for all its properties.
Chng: Keppel has adopted a comprehensive stakeholder engagement approach, to ensure that the interests of various stakeholders are considered as part of our governance framework. These stakeholders could be individuals, groups of individuals or organisations that affect and/or could be affected by Keppel’s activities, products and services and the company’s performance.
We engage with our stakeholders regularly through various platforms in determining the company’s material areas of focus, and to ensure that our stakeholders’ concerns are meaningfully captured and addressed. Materiality assessments are important components of Keppel’s strategy and reporting approach.
Sim: At SBS Transit, our corporate governance framework is firmly rooted in inclusivity, which balances the diverse needs of our stakeholders. The introduction of our board diversity policy in 2019 is a testament to this commitment, ensuring a rich blend of expertise, experience, age, and gender within the board. The diversity of our board enhances its ability to understand the diverse interests of stakeholders and to develop strategies that effectively address their concerns.
The board works in close collaboration with management to identify key stakeholder groups and develop strategies that effectively address their concerns, maintaining transparency and accountability throughout the organisation. This inclusive approach is further exemplified by our early adoption of hybrid meetings with shareholders, which promote real-time communication, live voting, and increased participation.
Yuen: We have a diverse board and management team, which helps ensure that the interests of various stakeholders are represented, and that decisions are made in the best interests of the company to achieve long-term sustainable growth.
Our engagement with our stakeholders includes regular and open communications with investors through webinars, investor meetings and AGMs, which help foster trust, provide updates on our strategy and key business developments, and ensure support for our strategic initiatives.
We also regularly conduct a materiality assessment with internal and external stakeholders to help us identify and understand the importance of ESG topics to them. In the latest round, we found that some of the ESG topics identified in our previous exercise three years earlier no longer held the same priority and significance for stakeholders, partly due to Covid and changes in the environmental and social climate. With these findings, we refreshed our sustainability commitments to align them with the interests of our stakeholders, and this has guided our strategy and actions recently.
