Updated
Jul 28, 2024, 05:02 AM
Published
Jul 28, 2024, 05:00 AM
SINGAPORE – Having good mentors is crucial for career growth, as DBS chief investment officer Hou Wey Fook has discovered.
Mr Hou, 61, who cut his teeth at sovereign wealth fund GIC after graduating from engineering school, said: “The wealth management business is not just about dollars and cents.
“It’s very much a business about people – building trust with clients and learning to bring out the best in your own people. A good mentor can show the way, check one’s blind spots, and be a trusted sounding board.”
He recounted how wisdom shared with him by former GIC chief investment officer Ng Kok Song and late veteran banker Elizabeth Sam helped to shape his 37-year career.
“Under Mr Ng’s leadership, I saw how he navigated global financial markets through bull and bear cycles, and how he guided us, as trainee analysts then, to build long-term, resilient portfolios,” said Mr Hou, who graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1987.
Meanwhile, Mrs Sam granted him the mandate to build and offer portfolio solutions when he was at OCBC Bank, especially solutions related to fixed income, which was still nascent in the local asset management industry in the early 1990s.
“Under their wing, I gained invaluable experience and matured through multiple financial crises. This has honed my instinct and ability to be a portfolio manager capable of seizing opportunities across global asset classes,” said Mr Hou.
After leaving GIC, Mr Hou joined the institutional asset manag...