Temasek Holdings

Temasek Holdings is an investment company owned by the government of Singapore. With an international staff of 380 people, it manages a portfolio of about S$198 billion (US$161 billion) at end of March 2012, focused primarily in Asia. It is an active shareholder and investor in financial services, telecommunications & media, technology, transportation, industrials, lifesciences, consumer, real estate, energy & resources.

Temasek is one of a few global firms with the highest corporate credit ratings by both Standard & Poor's and Moody's, of AAA and Aaa respectively. It has also attained perfect scores quarterly on the "Transparency Index for Sovereign wealth funds", a measure of the openness of government-owned investment funds.

In addition, the Government of Singapore has another investment arm, the substantially larger Government Investment Corporation (GIC), which invests primarily the country's foreign reserves.

Temasek has claimed that it is not strictly a sovereign wealth fund, in the sense that it "has to sell assets to raise cash for new investments and doesn't require the government to give approvals". This claim, made by a Temasek spokesman in 2008, was subsequently disputed by the Singapore Ministry of Finance's governance and investment director, who asserted that a broad definition of the term "sovereign wealth fund" could include "all state-owned investment vehicles, regardless of their funding". He noted, however, that the claim had been made in the context of a 2008 agreement between the United States Treasury, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and GIC regarding the transparency and non-politicization of investments by sovereign wealth funds, and that Temasek already meets disclosure guidelines and provides more details than required by the agreement.