SATS and CapitaLand Ascott Trust (CLAS) have emerged tops once again in the Singapore Governance and Transparency Index (SGTI), an annual study that ranks listed companies (listcos) on their corporate governance practices and disclosures.
City Developments Limited (CDL) and CDL Hospitality Trusts (CDLHT), however, dropped out of the general category’s top 10 and the REIT and business trust category’s top five leaderboards respectively. Both CDL and CDLHT had placed second in their respective categories last year.
Jointly conducted by CPA Australia, the Centre for Governance and Sustainability (CGS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, and the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID), the study assessed 467 Singapore-listed companies and 42 REITs and business trusts.
To avoid “subjective” assessments, the study only considered publicly available information, says Professor Lawrence Loh, director of CGS. This includes annual reports, sustainability reports, websites, announcements on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) website and media coverage.
The study excluded companies with stocks that are suspended or delisted, along with funds and secondary-listed firms.
“We put ourselves in the shoes of the investors,” says Loh to The Edge Singapore following an award ceremony and panel discussion on Aug 13. “We don’t do confidential consultations and investigations. It becomes very subjective if you have coffee [with listcos] to find out more; there’s no way you can standardise it and make it impartial across organisations.”
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Thus, the corporate governance scandal that erupted at CDL earlier this year was not captured in last year’s assessment, says Loh. “What happened this year is that perhaps, within our holistic framework, CDL may have had some movement in some indicators that collectively led to a decline. The individual measures collectively contributed to a lessening of their performance.”
Similarly, CDLHT’s fall in this year’s ranking was “in some way” due to their “mothership”, says Loh. CDLHT’s sponsor is Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Limited, a subsidiary of CDL.
Keppel, Singtel runners-up
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For the general category, the overall mean score in 2025 is 70.9 points, against a maximum of 143 points. This is up from 69.3 points in 2024.
Keppel rose two spots to second place, while Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) climbed one spot to rank third this year.
Jardine Cycle & Carriage and DBS Group Holdings are ranked fourth and fifth this year, while last year’s second runner-up United Overseas Bank (UOB) fell to seventh place this year.
The overall scoring system for the general category comprises five pillars for a total of 100 points: board responsibility (35 points), rights of shareholders (10 points), ESG and stakeholders (20 points), accountability and audit (10 points), and disclosure and transparency (25 points). There is also a 43-point adjustment for bonuses and penalties to account for best and worst practices.
According to the study’s organisers, listcos in the general category performed strongest in disclosures related to shareholder rights, achieving a mean normalised score of 87%. This was followed by sustainability-related matters and accountability and audit, both with mean normalised scores of 68%.
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Speaking to The Edge Singapore, Loh says listcos are most often penalised for providing vague information. “Director movement — everybody will give the same excuse: [they are leaving to] pursue personal opportunities. How can you say that when four directors leave [simultaneously and they] all want to pursue personal opportunities?”
These are material information that are important but “beyond what is required”, says Loh, “because the rule doesn’t say you must detail [it]”. “We give penalties if [there is] too many generic statements that have no value to stakeholders, particularly investors.”
CapitaLand entities secure top three spots
Meanwhile, REITs and business trusts’ overall mean score in 2025 is 90.2 points, against a maximum of 143 points. This is up from 86.6 points in 2024.
Meanwhile, CapitaLand-related entities clinched the top three positions in REIT and business trust category. CapitaLand Ascendas REIT (CLAR) and CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT) have placed second and third this year.
NetLink NBN Trust and Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust (formerly known as Stoneweg European REIT), round out the top five.
The SGTI evaluates REITs and business trusts on criteria similar to the general category, but in addition to the base score of the SGTI (75 points), REITs and business trusts face 25 points worth of questions that focus on structure, leverage, interested person transactions, competency of REIT manager or trustee-manager and emoluments, or fees.
Organisers say REITs and business trusts exhibited strong performance in disclosures relating to shareholder rights, with a mean normalised score of 98%. The mean scores for accountability and audit, and sustainability-related matters are comparable, at 85% and 82% respectively.
Financial metric proposed
The SGTI 2025 scorecard expanded its emphasis on sustainability disclosures, including climate reporting.
The majority (83.3%) of listcos assessed have quantitative sustainability targets set for the coming year, while two-thirds (66%) have such targets set for the medium- to long-term.
According to Loh, the reverse used to be true among listcos, and such targets were not a priority in the past.
Loh stresses that the SGTI was revised in 2024 to become a “dynamic” index, “able to assess corporate performance in line with evolving regulations”. Hence, scores across years are not precisely comparable.
Looking ahead, the organisers are refining the assessment framework for 2026 and beyond, with plans to adopt a “market-centric model” that incorporates financial indicators into the evaluation.
Under the proposed enhancements, value indicators derived from financial statements, stock-related data, or both could be incorporated alongside the current review of governance disclosures and practices.
Loh proposes that metrics like return on equity, net profit margin and interest coverage ratio contribute as much as 25% of next year’s scores, with existing criteria making up the remaining 75%.
What about smaller firms?
In a subsequent panel, however, panellists and board directors in the audience say the coming addition could distort comparisons of scores across the years and penalise young, innovative companies that have yet to turn a profit.
Incorporating financial value into the SGTI is akin to changing the grading of national exams, says Stefanie Yuen-Thio, joint managing partner at TSMP Law.
“If we continue to have the same SGTI tracker, then like a good Singaporean student, we know how we’re doing compared to last year,” she says. “Once you change the grading, all the ‘PSLE mums’ will be very upset. Now that we’re not grading on the same line anymore, how do I know whether my kid is doing better?”
Daniel Ee, chairperson of the board of Keppel Infrastructure Fund Management, proposes that assessment of financial metrics be presented as a separate score parallel to the results of next year’s SGTI. “You can draw any correlation [between the two] and at some stage, in the future, you can put it in [the SGTI]. That might be a better, more calibrated and measured way to introduce it.”
From left: Terence Quek, CEO, SID; Stefanie Yuen-Thio, joint managing partner, TSMP Law; Michael Tang, head of listing compliance, Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo); Tan Yen Yen, independent director, OCBC Bank; and Daniel Ee, chairperson, Keppel Infrastructure Fund Management
Yuen-Thio warns that a future iteration of the SGTI that takes financial value into account could even hinder SGX’s efforts to attract high-growth companies in emerging tech sectors.
“Value creation for a loss-making company with a lot of potential will not be yield-making today,” says Yuen-Thio. “But if you only reward those metrics, then I think you will not be encouraging those companies to come and list here.”
Yuen-Thio also cautions that larger companies often have more resources at their disposal and thus enjoy an unfair advantage over their smaller peers.
Indeed, a “statistically significant” relationship remains between firm size and performance, says Professor Lawrence Loh, director of CGS, pointing to a scatter plot of this year’s scores.
Yuen-Thio asks: “How much of these awards being given — how much of this high score — is because you can afford very good third-party service providers to help you do the reporting? It could be that you have a very well-run small company, [but] you just don’t know how to position it.”
She adds: “I need to speak up for the smaller companies. We are all speaking as board members of very large companies with a much larger budget to comply [with regulations]... I don’t know that the conversation today is necessarily going to resonate with a small business owner.”
Charts: CGS
Photo: CPA Australia, SID and CGS
Read more about the Singapore Governance and Transparency Index (SGTI):
