Seems like Andrew Kuan turns out to be a dud, after all. I guess PM Lee knew what he was talking about.
ST Aug 12, 2005
Andrew Kuan was asked to resign or face sack from JTC
By Lynn Lee
JTC Corporation yesterday revealed that presidential hopeful Andrew Kuan was asked to leave the statutory board as the board and management were not happy with his performance.
In fact, the former group chief financial officer had to be told three times to resign, before he finally did so on July 2 last year.
........
Mr Kuan had been hired after going through JTC's selection process. Nothing in his resume or references appeared troubling and he was appointed as group CFO in June 2001.
When he was assessed the following April, both Mr Chong and Mr Lim found his performance unsatisfactory. They considered asking him to leave but gave him a chance to improve.
But they were still not satisfied by his next appraisal in July 2003. So in September 2003, Mr Chong and the other three board members all agreed that Mr Kuan should be asked to resign.
..............
Separately, water treatment firm Hyflux issued a statement on Mr Kuan's three-month stint as CFO for its joint venture project with Dubai-based Istithmar. It expressed disappointment with him and said he was asked to resign or have his employment terminated. He left on May 13 this year.
1 comment:
DeadPoet:
I didn't reproduce the entire ST article. But the JTC folks did say that they had nothing negative to say about Andrew's character; they merely felt that as an employee, he wasn't performing at the expected standards.
As for Hyflux, it seems that Andrew was not CFO for the entire Hyflux group, but merely CFO for a particular Hyflux joint venture (which means that the role is a much lesser role than his JTC role, where he was CFO of the entire group). Hyflux's selection process is therefore not necessarily obviously flawed - while Andrew may not have been a good choice for a Group CFO role, Hyflux might reasonably have believed that Andrew ought to be able to handle a role as a considerably "smaller" kind of CFO.
Ivan: When I commented on Andrew Kuan in an earlier post, I assumed that it was true that he had, of his own volition and without any pressure from JTC management, chosen to quit JTC, for his own personal reasons.
As it turns out, it seems that JTC had been the one telling him to go; in fact, early on, JTC had given him feedback that he wasn't performing well and had told him to buck up; when he still didn't improve to the expected standards, they then told him to leave; he kept asking for extensions, before getting out shortly past the 3-year mark.
This doesn't reflect well at all on Andrew. Consider that when a new guy joins; you might give him six months to settle in; another six months to start performing; it may take you another six months to realise that he's just not performing; you tell him to buck up and give him another six months to do so; before discovering that he still hasn't improved. That's already 2 out of three years .... Then he starts bargaining for extensions.
I wouldn't say that the JTC had been slow to kick him out. Three years is quite short, for a "kicking-out" type of scenario.
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