Philip Yeo - Career

Career

Philip Yeo served in the Administrative Service from June 1970 to 31 March 1999. He served in various appointments in the Ministry of Defence, including Permanent Secretary for logistics, technology research & development and defence industries at age 33. He left MINDEF to assume the appointment of Chairman, Economic Development Board in January 1986.

During his EDB chairmanship, Yeo redirected EDB's focus from the traditional fields to new areas of business. These included: Internationally exportable services; developing high-tech industries like biomedical science, semiconductors, aerospace and specialty chemicals; nurturing local small and medium-sized enterprises and encouraging Singapore companies to make direct investments abroad. Yeo pioneered Singapore's participation in overseas infrastructure development projects such as those in the Bintan Industrial Estate and the Wuxi-Singapore Industrial Park in China.

During this time, Philip Yeo also served as the first Chairman of the National Computer Board (now Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore from 1980 to 1987. He played a leading role in formulating and championing Singapore's first national computerisation plan to evolve the nation into the information age.

Yeo was Board Member (from 1980) and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Singapore Technologies Holdings from 1987 to 1993. He also served as Chairman of Sembawang Corporation (1994–1998) and the successor SembCorp Industries (1998–1999), Pidemco Land (1999–2000) and CapitaLand (2000–2003) formed from Pidemco after a merger in 2000.

Yeo was the Chairman of A*STAR from 2000 to 2007. As Chairman of A*STAR he was credited with developing Singapore to become a leading centre for biomedical research and development in Asia within fields such as the biological mechanisms of infection, functional genomics, and stem cell research. To that end he recruited, amongst many others, accomplished researchers like Edison Liu, Nancy Jenkins, Neal Copeland, and David P. Lane to work on biomedical research in Singapore's biomedical hub Biopolis.

Yeo stepped down as Chairman of A*STAR and become chairman of the Standards, Productivity and Innovation Board (Spring Singapore) on 1 April 2007. He was also appointed senior adviser on science and technology to the Minister for Trade and Industry.

In his role as Adviser for Economic Development in the Prime Minister’s Office from April 2007 to August 2011, Yeo assisted in expanding Singapore's economic space through forging new economic links and providing strategic inputs in Singapore government partnerships with foreign governments who value Singapore's development expertise, including countries in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America as well as those in Russia.

Yeo is a member of the United Nations Committee of Experts in Public Administration (CEPA), established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) from 2010 to 2013 for the promotion and development of public administration and governance among Member States, in connection with the United Nations Development Agenda.

Yeo continues to be active on Boards of global companies. He is currently a non-executive director on the Board of Directors of City Developments Limited, and in April 2012 was announced as a candidate for an external directorship at Hitachi, one of two non-Japanese outside directors.