Temasek's Gan to replace Rozario as Fullerton Financial CEO

The head of the Temasek (TEM.UL) unit that invested in Asian banks such as China Construction Bank (0939.HK) and India’s ICICI (ICBK.NS) is stepping down in the latest of senior management changes involving the Singapore state investor.

Fullerton Financial Holdings CEO Francis Rozario is leaving at the end of July and will replaced be Temasek senior managing director Gan Chee Yen, a spokesman for the Singapore investor told Reuters in an email on Tuesday.

 

The change at Fullerton, whose other holdings include Bank of China (3988.HK) and Indonesia’s Bank Danamon (BDMN.JK), comes just one day after reports that Seatown, an investment firm seeded by Temasek, is losing its two co-CEOs.

 

Other recent changes at Temasek include the hiring of Png Chin Yee, co-head of UBS’s (UBSN.VX) Asia financial institutions group, as managing director, and the retirement of president Simon Israel.

 

“I can confirm Francis Rozario is leaving his full-time role as CEO of Fullerton Financial Holdings at the end of the month. He will remain as an adviser to the board of the company,” the Temasek spokesman said.  

The spokesman added that Gan will keep his position as senior managing director, special projects with Temasek during his secondment to Fullerton.

 

Temasek, which manages about US$158 billion ($192 billion), is the world’s 10th largest sovereign wealth fund and Singapore’s second biggest after GIC (GIC.UL), according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institution.

 

Financial services firms accounted for 36% of Temasek’s portfolio at the end of March 2011, the Singapore investor said in an annual report released earlier this month.

 

Rozario spent close to 30 years at Citigroup before he joined Temasek. Prior to becoming CEO of Fullerton, he was president-director of Danamon from 2003 to 2005.

 

Gan, who joined Temasek in 2003, was previously director of finance at Singapore Technologies.

 

Fullerton’s successes included its early investments in China Construction Bank and Bank of China, whose share prices have soared since their Hong Kong IPOs, but has also suffered major setbacks such as its investment in Pakistan’s NIB Bank (NDIF.KA).

 

According to estimates by Pakistan’s Invisor Securities, Temasek has to-date invested about US$540 million in NIB and is sitting on a paper loss of about US$400 million.