While CEO exits are not unusual, unless due to run-ins with the law or some other aberration, they raise a bunch of questions when the head of the company quits after just a short stint.
This past week, two companies on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced the departure of their respective chiefs. Both affirmed the need for new leadership for their next growth phase but were silent on why their top officeholder could not continue running the show.
‘Leadership realignment’
Citing “board-led leadership realignment for growth”, AEM Holdings said on July 27 that Amy Leong stepped down as CEO with immediate effect, with Samer Kabbani, 51, most recently the chip tester’s US-based president and chief technology officer (CTO), taking over.
Leong, 50, joined AEM as CEO on July 1 last year. Her departure — exactly 392 days since starting the job — and Kabbani’s appointment marked AEM’s third CEO shuffle in five years. Leong’s predecessor, Chandran Ramesh Nair, lasted four times longer, running the company from July 2020 to June last year.
Nair, Leong and Kabbani are not, and have never been, substantial shareholders of AEM. Both Nair and Leong — and even Kabbani in his prior roles as president and CTO — worked under AEM chairman Loke Wai San, who has been at the helm of the board since 2011.
On July 29, ProsperCap Corporation announced the resignation of Iqbal Jumabhoy as its CEO and executive director. Jumabhoy, an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became CEO in January last year, following the completion of a reverse takeover of DTP Infinities by 3Cnergy, which has since been renamed ProsperCap.
ProsperCap owns hotels in the UK and franchises them to leading brands like Hilton and Marriott to run. According to the company, Jumabhoy, 67, felt his work was done now that it is a listed entity with its systems and people in place. He will stay on as an advisor for three months. ProsperCap’s vice-chairman, Weerachai Amornrat-Tana, is acting CEO until a replacement is found. Jumabhoy does not own any shares in ProsperCap.
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The departures of Leong and Jumabhoy are not necessarily red flags, even if they might have caught the market off guard. Still, investors likely would have wanted to see whether the two had enough runway and wherewithal to steady the ship and pull off the turnarounds they were hired to deliver, rather than watching another change at the top reset the clock.
AEM’s revenue last year tumbled 21% as demand for its chip-testing services weakened. ProsperCap managed to bump up its topline slightly last year but higher expenses and the absence of any write-back of earlier property impairments left it deep in the red.
Other companies on SGX with CEOs who called it quits not long after being on the job include Singapore Post (SingPost), Capital World and Forise International. Of the three, Forise’s then-CEO, Ching Yeh, had the shortest stint. After just four months on the job, Hong Kong-based Ching resigned in November 2019 over a dispute with Forise, a corporate advisory firm, about his pay package.
Over at SingPost, Shahrin Abdol Salam resigned as Singapore CEO in February this year, barely 10 months after being appointed on May 1. Hoo Khee Leng took the helm of property developer Capital World in January 2023 and resigned in December last year. None of these three men were substantial shareholders of their companies when they took the job.
Consistency matters
Frequent leadership changes may not always point to corporate rot, but they seldom inspire confidence. Strategy takes time to craft, refine and implement. CEOs parachuting in and out usually leave shareholders wondering whether the company has a real game plan.
The unease among investors can be compounded when CEOs do not have meaningful equity ownership in the companies they run. Without skin in the game, the top job may come across as more of a contract gig than a mission to create long-term value for stakeholders.
Companies may argue that leadership changes are part of a so-called broader realignment, but for public markets, consistency matters. Investors deserve leaders who will commit, weather rough cycles, and be held accountable for seeing through their action plans.
At the end of the day, the privilege of being CEO should come with a matching responsibility: to stay long enough to finish what you started. Otherwise, it’s just membership, not leadership.
