Page 42 - Forbes - Asia (June 2018)

GLOBAL 2OOO

TOMORROWLAND

If smart cities are the future of

cities, then Singapore blue-chip
Keppel is signing up.

BY JANE A. PETERSON
ngineering and construction heavyweight Keppel Corp.
is celebrating its golden anniversary with the slogan
“Fi y years: Shaping the future,” and it boasts 21,000

employees in 24 countries focused on that task. But it’s
E a new Keppel unit with just 10 employees that may end
up shaping an outsized portion of that future.
Keppel formed the unit, Keppel Urban Solutions, last November
to help pitch its experience as a master developer and to harness its
range of skills. Started as a local shipyard, the Singapore conglom-
erate now positions itself as an international player in building the
“smart” cities of the future in Asia and elsewhere. “Urbanization is
a mega-trend,” says Chief Executive Loh Chin Hua, breaking into a
conident smile at the company’s sky-high headquarters in Keppel

Bay Tower overlooking the Singapore Straits. He ticks of Keppel’s
strengths in four sectors—energy, property, infrastructure and asset

management—all essential to its city-building vision. “he opportu-
nity is vast.”

he unit’s inaugural project is Saigon Sports City, which is de-
signed to accommodate 17,000 residents by 2025. It’s eyeing foreign
investors and Vietnam’s growing middle class for apartment sales.
Bulldozers are now lattening a 64-hectare site in district 2 of Ho Chi

Minh City, and groundbreaking is set for late this year. “We will de-
sign, build, stitch it all together—and stay on to own and operate it,”
says Loh, a former executive of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth

fund. hat marks a shi in strategy for Keppel—formerly it would MUNSHI AHMED FOR FORBES
sell its projects once they were done. Now it will keep them, generat- “Urbanization is a
mega-trend,” says
ing recurring income, a plus for investors. CEO Loh Chin Hua at

his city-within-a-city in Vietnam is being built in the shape Keppel Bay site.
40 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018