Temasek creates breakaway investment firm "Sea Town"

Temasek Holdings, the Singapore Government Investment firm, is creating a new spinoff for international investments called Sea Town and has appointed Charles Ong as its CEO.

In a cryptically worded email from Temasek PR spokespeople, all we got at Singapore Business Review was the following.

"Seatown is a global investment company, wholly-owned by Temasek Holdings."

"Temasek has recently set up Seatown Holdings as a wholly-owned global investment company. We have a small core team seconded from Temasek, and are still in the process of building up the Seatown team."

Temasek is the Malay word for Sea Town, perhaps this renaming has something to do with Temasek's move to create a separate holding company for non-Singaporean investments. At this stage little else is known.

The WSJ is speculating that the new fund will allow Singaporeans to co-invest with Sea Town, but not presumably with Temasek.

According to the Temasek website, Charles Ong started his career as an investment banker with Lazard Freres & Co., New York. He also worked for Deutsche Bank AG in Singapore before joining Temasek.