40 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018TOMORROWLAND
If smart cities are the future of
cities, then Singapore blue-chip
Keppel is signing up.BY JANE A. PETERSONGLOBAL 2OOO
E
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
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
coni dent 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. “h e opportu-
nity is vast.”
h e 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 l attening 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. h at marks a shi in strategy for Keppel—formerly it would
sell its projects once they were done. Now it will keep them, generat-
ing recurring income, a plus for investors.
h is city-within-a-city in Vietnam is being built in the shape“Urbanization is a
mega-trend,” says
CEO Loh Chin Hua at
MUNSHI AHMED FOR FORBESKeppel Bay site.