Target Asset’s Mr Teng Ngiek Lian
Wow, this is my first time coming across someone like Mr Teng Ngiek Lian!
He is a former Managing Director of Morgan Grenfell Investment Management Asia and Managing Director of UBS Asset Management, Singapore. He founded Target Asset Management.
You can check out his company’s presentation here. I fell in love with his personality after reading some articles on him.
The new philanthropists in town: $50m fund for ‘the overlooked, unloved, underdog causes’
Never in his wildest dreams did fund manager Teng Ngiek Lian, 66, imagine he would make it this big in life. And so he has given a “quite substantial” part of his wealth to needy causes.
He has donated $50 million to the endowment fund of his Silent Foundation, which he set up in 2010.
It is so named as it aims to aid those without a voice – such as by funding charities helping foreign workers and by promoting environmental conservation and animal protection, among others.
Mr Teng, the sixth of seven children of a clog maker, says: “I came from nothing. And I wouldn’t be where I am without the help of so many people, so it is only right I give some back to society.”
Growing up in Terengganu, Malaysia, he had to fund his own higher education. He worked as an accounts clerk by day and studied at night to qualify as a certified chartered accountant.
When he approached his 60th birthday, he started “asking what is life all about”. He decided to do philanthropy “seriously and do it well”.
“I was an underdog and so I want to fund the overlooked, unloved and underdog causes,” he says. “I’m not doing this to clear my conscience, but to make a difference.”
Mr Teng says: “I’m inspired by the good example of (legendary American investor) Warren Buffett, who said he will leave enough for his children to do anything, but not enough that they will do nothing.”
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/50m-fund-for-the-overlooked-unloved-underdog-causes
Aid for the ‘silent’ needy: The Silent Foundation
Before he founded Target Asset Management as a boutique fund manager in 1996, he led investment banks such as Morgan Grenfell and UBS Asset Management in Asia.
He has held top management positions elsewhere and sat on many boards in his 43 years in the financial world.
And through it all, he has not forgotten how his success has been entirely self-made.
The 62-year-old Terengganu native was educated in Malaysia, going to school in Dungun and Kuantan, Pahang, and then the School of Business Studies at the Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur.
But such a hands-on approach has been the feisty 66-year-old’s modus operandi since he started The Silent Foundation six years ago. Despite the personal discomforts, Teng, whose boutique fund manager Target Asset Management has about US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) in assets under management, says his sojourn empowered him with first-hand knowledge of how locals lived.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Because why are we here in this world? There must be a purpose.” That was what he asked himself as he crossed his 60th birthday. “I asked myself, what is this life all about? I didn’t come from a well-to-do family so I wanted to make a lot of money. A lot of people helped me along the way.”
“But then I realised that life is not about accumulating wealth alone. Being able to redistribute wealth is a greater privilege.” So he set up the foundation to focus on “overlooked” causes and look after those “unloved” by society.