Asia-Commonwealth Business Summit

Dr. Lim Boh Soon is an engineer by training and a well-regarded professional from VC & PE industry with over 25 years of working experience in Asia. He is a Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, and is currently an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of 2 publicly-listed companies on the SGX, namely OUE Commercial REIT Pte Ltd and Jumbo Group Ltd.

 

Dr. Lim had worked in various senior management positions for several regional and multinational organizations, including UBS Capital Asia Pacific Limited, The NatSteel Group, Rothschild Ventures Asia Limited and The Singapore Technologies Group.

 

Dr. Lim was the first Non-Muslim CEO, of one of the foremost Islamic Bank in the world, whereby he successfully set-up and established Kuwait Finance House (www.kfh.com) in Singapore.  Prior to that, he was the first foreign CEO of Vietcombank Fund Management Company (www.vcbf.com) in Vietnam and was instrumental in establishing the Company and its entire fund management operations for the largest State-owned Bank in Vietnam.

 

Some of his achievements included, being a member of the Regional Investment Committee for UBS AG in Asia, which managed the US $ 4.0 billion proprietary PE fund for the Swiss bank, the successful listing of an Indonesian company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (“HKSE”) with a market capitalization exceeding US $ 2.38 billion at IPO.

 

More recently, he was involved in successfully listing his investee company, a Canadian Oil-sands company, on the HKSE with a market capitalisation of more than US $ 1.7 billion.

 

Dr. Lim graduated with a BSc(1st Class Hon.) in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Strathclyde in UK (formerly “The Royal College of Science & Technology”) in 1981. In his final year, Dr. Lim won the Professor Mellanby Memorial Prize for outstanding meritorious performance. He went on to obtain his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the same University in 1985, through the sponsorships given by the University and the British Government’s Overseas Research Schemes.