As polled by Time Magazine... 
She looks ladylike here... 
Talk about influence! China, a country with 1.3 billion people,
recently said it was considering establishing a company "like
Temasek Holdings," the investment arm of the government of
Singaporea country of 4 million. Temasek in the past five years
has moved from being a passive custodian to being an activeand
outstandinginvestor. Shareholder equity has nearly doubled since
2002, to about $90 billion.
When Ho Ching became CEO in 2002, she overhauled Temasek, setting
up more precise performance guidelines while raising accountability
and transparency. Ho is well connected: her husband is Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore's legendary elder
statesman Lee Kuan Yew. But she has taken a strictly professional
approach. Rather than prop up zombies, she has not been afraid to
let operations fail.
Ho's critics like to focus on Temasek's troubled $3.8 billion
purchase of Shin Corp. from former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra. But as one of my mentors instructed me, if you do not
make mistakes, you are not trying and will never succeed. Both
Japan and South Korea have just announced that they too are
considering "Temasek-like entities." Expect even more countries to
discover that the road to the future runs through Singapore.
Temasek's Chief Executive Ho Ching has been named one of Time
magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.
She is among 29 women in the list which includes US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo.
This is the first time Ms Ho Ching has made it to the list of
Time's Most Influential.
In the past, she had been named as one of Fortune's and Forbes's
most powerful business women in Asia.
TIME said it recognises these 100 people as those "whose power,
talent and moral example is transforming the world".
Among this year's highlights - Chinese President Hu Jintao is on
the list for the first time and there are more names from Asia than
previous years.
This year's honourees come from 27 countries and they fall under
four subsections - Leaders & Revolutionaries, Artists &
Entertainers, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes &
Pioneers.
Also in this year's list are Osama bin Laden, American Idol creator
Simon Fuller, Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing and Borat actor Sacha
Baron Cohen.
Time's senior editor Zoher Abdoolcarim, based in Hong Kong, said
drawing up the list was nothing short of a global exercise.
Editors, correspondents and reporters worldwide were consulted
before a team of editors at the magazine's headquarters whittled
the list down to the final 100.
"A lot of countries are looking at it (Temasek Holdings) as a way
to channel investments of government revenues, as a model to do
that," said Time's senior editor Abdoolcarim.
"The second thing is that Temasek Holdings has in the past year
acquired a much higher profile. It has been on an acquisitive
trail, investing in a lot of new countries that it wasn't looking
at before. So I think this elevates Temasek to a new level of
operation and strategy, and this stems very much from Ms Ho Ching's
leadership."
