Orient Issue 78

Orient

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SINGAPORE ISSUE 78 | AUG 2020

BUILDING NETWORKS | CONNECTING BUSINESSES | CREATING OPPORTUNITIES

The

Technology Issue

28

Understanding Singapore’s Technology Aspirations

34 40

Content Moderation and Online Platforms An impossible problem?

The Importance of Governance Expertise in Scale-up Tech Success

43 50

MCI (P) 067/04/2019

The Changing Nature of Mobility

Automation and Data Intelligence: Shielding Businesses from COVID-19 Impact

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President's Message Executive Director's Message News New Members Recent Webinars Upcoming Events & Webinars Feature: Understanding Singapore’s Technology Aspirations Feature: Content Moderation and Online Platforms: An impossible problem?

Feature: The Importance of Governance Expertise in Scale-up Tech Success Feature: The Changing Nature of Mobility Matters of Opinion: Technology Feature: Automation and Data Intelligence: Shielding Businesses from COVID-19 Impact Feature: Is Now a Good Time to Outsource Your Office Move?

Let's Discuss: Energy and the Circular Economy Member Discounts

Editor: Lucy Haydon lucy@britcham.org.sg

Orient is a bi-monthly magazine published by the British Chamber of Commerce, Singapore.

Co-Editor & Designer: Nicole Alison Lim alison@britcham.org.sg

© All rights reserved.

137 Telok Ayer Street, #06-03, Singapore 068602 Tel: +65 6222-3552 Fax: +65 6222-3556 Email: info@britcham.org.sg www.britcham.org.sg

The views and opinions expressed or implied in Orient are those of the authors or contributors and do not reflect those of the British Chamber of Commerce, its officers or editorial staff. No reproduction of articles without the prior permission of the Chamber.

Unsolicited transparencies and articles are sent at owner’s risk and the Chamber accepts no liability for loss or damage. Copy is not for sale and images belong to their respective owners. They are for illustrative purposes only, and no copyright infringement is intended.

@britchamsg @bccsingapore @british-chamber-ofcommerce-singapore

Advertising Inquiries Lucy Haydon lucy@britcham.org.sg +65 6718-0535

CONTENTS

CHALLENGING MINDS AND IGNITING PASSIONS. Dulwich College (Singapore) is an international school, for students aged 2-18, with a British independent school ethos which draws upon 400 years of excellence, innovation, tradition and values. To learn more about the Dulwich Difference, and to book a private tour, please visit singapore.dulwich.org or email admissions@dulwich-singapore.edu.sg Dulwich College (Singapore) CPE Registration Number: 201027137D. Period of Registration: 09 January 2020 to 08 January 2024. School Location: 71 Bukit Batok West Avenue 8, Singapore, 658966.

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OUR PARTNERS PLATINUM PARTNER

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BRITCHAM BOARD

COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSONS

MANAGEMENT TEAM

PRESIDENT:

BUILT ENVIRONMENT: David Mackerness (Chairperson), Alisdair Gillies (Co-Chair)

Executive Director: David Kelly

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION: Andrew Ashman (C0-Chair), Alexander Harrison (Co-Chair)

Head of Marketing & Communications and Partnerships; Deputy Executive Director: Lucy Haydon

ENERGY & UTILITIES: Tim Rockell (Chairperson), Bree Miechel (Co-Chair)

Business Services Director: Nicole Wharfe

Richard Warburton, Arcadis Asia

VICE-PRESIDENTS:

Michael Shearer OBE, McLaren Applied Fiona Carney, Microsoft

SECRETARY:

Haslam Preeston, Jardine Matheson

TREASURER:

David Fowler, Sanne Group

BOARD MEMBERS:

Angel Cheung-Horenfeldt, Barclays Caroline Underhill, The Fry Group Damian Adams, Watson Farley & Williams Damian Hills, The British Club James Hennah, BT Singapore Pte Ltd James Nesbitt, Standard Chartered Bank Shivkumar Seerapu, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets Plc Justinian Habner, Department for International Trade Lucy Watkins, British Council

FINANCIAL & FINTECH: Katharine Haggie (Chairperson), Francesca McKee (Co-Chair) HEALTHCARE & LIFE SCIENCES: Thalia Georgiou (Chairperson) INFOCOMM TECHNOLOGY: Magda Chelly (Chairperson), Hitan Mehta (Co-Chair), Faisal Parvez (Co-Chair) LEADERSHIP, TALENT & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Joe Tofield (Chairperson), Don Rapley (Co-Chair), David Gardner (Co-Chair)

Member Relations Administrator: Melissa Ng Head of Events: Helen Starr Events Executive: Safreen Anwardeen Events Executive: Sabeena Nayyar Senior Marketing & Communications Executive: Nicole Alison Lim

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS: Suzy Goulding (Chairperson), Andrew Clark (Co-Chair)

Marketing & Communications and Events Executive: Samantha Nelson

STARTUP, ENTREPRENEUR & SMALL BUSINESS: Lara Quie (Chairperson), Mark Florance (Co-Chair), Kris Sasitharan (Co-Chair)

Trade Services Advisor: Aisyah Ariffin

SUSTAINABILITY: Sarah Cragg (Chairperson), Mark Florance (Co-Chair) TRANSPORT, LOGISTICS & SUPPLY CHAIN: Simon Petch (Chairperson), Nicholas Potter (Co-Chair)

Finance Manager: Radhika Chauhan Office Manager: Anna C Garciso

WOMEN IN BUSINESS: Luciana Vichino (Chairperson), Wanying Lim (Co-Chair)

CHAMBER INFORMATION

LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP $4,280

Published Fee: $6,955

Membership Benefits •

Use of 4 tennis and squash courts

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3 swimming pools

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Workhub

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The Hangout for teens

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A supervised playroom for young children

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Access to 4 restaurants and a pool bar

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Enjoy reciprocal arrangements with over 200 clubs worldwide including The Tower Club, Laguna National Golf and Country Club and ONE 15 Marina in Singapore

Call 6410 1100 or email membership@britishclub.org.sg to book a Club tour now!

EXCLUSIVELY FOR MEMBERS OF BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Above price inclusive of prevailing GST. Other terms and conditions apply.

73 Bukit Tinggi Road Singapore 289761 www.britishclub.org.sg

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Message from the President

Dear Members, There is much talk about what we ‘normally’ did and the ways that things are going to be in the future being the ‘new normal’, whenever and whatever this transpires to be. Routine provides a degree of comfort, especially during periods of uncertainty, and it has been particularly pleasing to see how the Chamber has evolved their approach to continue delivering on our promise to members – Building Networks, Connecting Businesses, Creating Opportunities – in a digital, rather than physical world. The growing number of members embracing virtual networking, content rich webinars and our podcast series has been really pleasing to see.

Richard Warburton President, British Chamber Of Commerce, Singapore richard@britcham.org.sg

A big thank you is due to all members who continue to provide great insights and feedback through our regular pulse checks.

These insights help us to prioritise the support that you need and to directly share input from the British business community to both the UK and Singapore Governments to support informed decision making. The prevailing sentiment from our members remains strong with a high level of confidence in Singapore as a business location.

For continued up to date advice on COVID, please make sure to visit and bookmark the new COVID-19 Information Hub on our website as a central resource. Updates to the website have also been made to bring together all the great digital content our business committees have been helping us to drive in the Content Library menu.

Following on from our recent Future Cities content, this issue of Orient is all about the technology of today and the future – from an overview of the landscape in Singapore to governance, content moderation, mobility and what industry is looking for – our members have showcased their expertise this month. I hope you will enjoy this deep dive into the industry.

Finally, I am looking forward to celebrating some fantastic achievements in our very first Virtual Annual Business Awards ceremony in October and hearing the stories behind the winning companies. If there is an award for resilience, adaptability and patience then each and every member would be a worthy winner.

Everyone is invited to join us in this complimentary event, make sure to register your place.

Stay safe.

Best regards,

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

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Message from the Executive Director

Dear Members, Please click on this video or scan the QR code to watch David's full update.

David Kelly Executive Director, British Chamber Of Commerce, Singapore david@britcham.org.sg

MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

STERLING MEMBERS

D ET U R

P O N S M UN

DO

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STERLING MEMBERS

GET IN TOUCH

GET IN TOUCH

137 Telok Ayer Street, #06-03, Singapore 068602 Tel: +65 6222-3552 Email: info@britcham.org.sg Website: www.britcham.org.sg

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Enter the 5th Annual Celebrating Diversity Photo Competition For the past four years, the British Chamber of Commerce has been encouraging people of all ages to consider the topics of diversity and inclusion.

The 12 shortlisted finalists this year will be featured and invited to a special prize presentation event featuring the British High Commissioner to Singapore, Her Excellency Kara Owen, who also acts as the final judge for the cash prize winners.

The competition....

• Is free to enter from 8AM on 14th September 2020 to 11.59PM on 30th November 2020 • Is open to all Singapore residents • Is open to those aged 13 or above (schools may wish to create a project around the competition) • Each entrant may submit up to 3 photos • Does not require membership of the Chamber to enter • Voting for the Most Popular photo stays open until 11.59PM on 7th December 2020

The prizes...

• 1st prize: SG$500 • 2nd prize: SG$300 • 3rd prize: SG$200 • Most popular photo prize (by votes): SG$300

Please note that competitors aged 13-16 years must seek parental consent to enter and should provide daytime contact information, ideally those of a parent or guardian, in case they are notified as being a finalist.

Photos that are blurred/of poor quality will not be approved for the contest by moderators.

Once you have submitted your photo, make sure to share it with your friends and family and ask them to vote for you by 11.59PM on 7th December 2020, as the most popular photo in the contest will also win a cash prize!

Any questions? Contact lucy@britcham.org.sg.

When considering your entry, think about...

• Which diversity and inclusion area are you addressing? Gender, age, culture, ability, mental health, sexual orientation and religion are all relevant topics • Your photo caption - make sure to include a few words or sentences to explain your choices • The audience - does your photo convey a message of inclusion?

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES FROM 14TH SEPTEMBER 2020 ONWARDS AT www.britcham.org.sg/celebrating-diversity With thanks to our Official Diversity & Inclusion Partner:

NEWS:

FROM THE CHAMBER

NEWS:

FROM THE CHAMBER

BritCham Goes Virtual for This Year's International Women's Day & 21st Annual Business Awards Ceremony International Women's Day: The Virtual Conference 22-29 September 2020 While the coronavirus has changed our plans to hold our annual International Women's Day lunch, important discussions around gender equality continue, and this year we bring you a very special triple-session International Women's Day Virtual Conference in it's place. We hope that by continuing to 'think together', we can help accelerate the pace of gender balance in organisations and find a way forward.

Register now for your ticket which includes all three sessions. Reward your employees, entertain your clients and save a potential $300 on individual prices by purchasing a Conference Group Ticket for up to 10 attendees (see ticket options for terms and conditions). The Conference is open for all to join - our members, members of the wider British Chambers of Commerce Global Network, and those who are not members of the network.

Click here to register for the conference

21st Annual Business Awards Virtual Awards Ceremony 29 October 2020 | 6-8PM As the longest-running awards initiative by an international Chamber in Singapore, we have been showcasing the best of business for over 20 years. In this very special evening, we recognise the finalists and winners of this years awards with our guest host, Sharanjit Leyl from the BBC. This year, we will be hosting a special Virtual Awards Ceremony with live announcements of the winners in each category and audience participation. All are welcome to join us - those participating in the Awards, members and guests.

Click here to register for the Awards Ceremony

Hear from the British High Commissioner Kara Owen in our latest podcast episode

In our latest series of podcast episodes, we are talking to those representing British interests here in Singapore and in the region.

In the first episode of this mini-series, our Executive Director David Kelly caught up with Her Excellency Kara Owen, British High Commissioner to Singapore, for an update on the SG-UK Partnership for the Future, sustainability goals, the FinTech sector and the personal opportunities and challenges she faces in her role.

Listen to the episode here or over at our Apple Podcast channel. You can also search for BritCham Singapore on your favourite podcast player - remember to subscribe and give us your rating!

With thanks to our Annual Partner St. James's Place Wealth Management – Asia for their sponsorship of these episodes.

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Making Progress in Inclusion & Equality

One year on from our inaugural Diversity and Inclusion advocates poll, the latest results show companies moving down the scale in inclusiveness, highlighting that there is plenty of work still to be done in raising awareness and best practice for equality in the workplace.

There is less senior-level support for D&I policy changes reported, potentially due to the nature of shifting priorities in present times, but nonetheless important to note as management buy-in of these issues is a critical first step in making progress.

This year's survey, created by our Diversity and Inclusion committee and with the support of our Official D&I Partner Barclays, took a closer look at support for LGBT+ employees, an issue which we recently addressed in Ep34 of our podcast. The committee is planning to provide resources and an event on the business case for Pride networks and LGBT+ support later this year, and into 2021. Listen to the podcast episode here or on your favourite player.

Click here or the image on the right to open the report.

How has the Chamber adapted since COVID-19?

Our Executive Director David Kelly was recently interviewed by distillery to hear how we've pivoted to digital content and supported our members, resulting in this excellent short video which tells our story.

Thank you to Simon Hearn and the team for this opportunity to profile the work of the Chamber.

NEWS:

FROM THE CHAMBER

NEWS:

FROM THE CHAMBER

Updates from the Trade Services team

If you do wish to reach out to the Trade Services team at any point, please feel free to email our Business Services Director, Nicole Wharfe, at nicole@britcham.org.sg

It has been a busy few months for the Trade Services Team delivering export projects for a variety of UK companies looking to enter the Singapore Market in different ways.

We also continue to work with numerous businesses in the Marine and Maritime sector, Automotive sector and services industry, Food and Beverage, Education and Consumer Goods Sectors.

To name a few;

Looking forward, we are also pleased to confirm that the Britcham Trade Services Team will be delivering at least two Virtual Trade Missions in the coming months – The Welsh Government Multi Sector Mission, which will commence on 7th September and the DIT North East Digital Healthcare mission, which will commence on 19th October.

• SmoothSkin, a pioneer in IPL technology • Teledyne, UK manufacturers of Radio Therapy equipment • Mining Machinery Developments, who design, manufacture mineral processing solutions • Red Compass, an expert payments, financial crime, data & analytics and strategic change consultancy

We will be reaching out to members to engage with the delegate companies where appropriate, so please do keep your eyes peeled for any contact from us!

PM commits £350 million to fuel green recovery

UK industry will receive around £350 million to cut down carbon emissions under new plans to step up efforts to tackle climate change, PM Boris Johnson announced today (22 July).

The multimillion pound investment package will build on the Prime Minister’s work throughout his first year in office to drive forward progress on the UK’s target to reach net zero by 2050, by helping businesses to decarbonise across the heavy industry, construction, space and transport sectors and to secure the UK’s place at the forefront of green innovation.

The investment comes ahead of the PM launching the first meeting of the Jet Zero Council later today, which will bring together government, representatives from the environmental sector and the aviation and aerospace industry to tackle aviation emissions in line with the government’s ambition to achieve the first ever zero emission long haul passenger plane.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "We’ve made great strides towards our net zero target over the last year, but it’s more important than ever that we keep up the pace of change to fuel a green, sustainable recovery as we rebuild from the pandemic.

The UK now has a huge opportunity to cement its place at the vanguard of green innovation, setting an example worldwide while growing the economy and creating new jobs.

That’s why we’re backing cutting edge research to cut costs and carbon across our great British industries, and even paving the way for the first ever zero emission long haul passenger flight – so that our green ambitions remain sky high as we build back better for both our people and our planet."

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Business and Energy Secretary, Alok Sharma, said: "Climate change is among the greatest challenges of our age. To tackle it we need to unleash innovation in businesses across the country.

This funding will reduce emissions, create green collar jobs and fuel a strong, clean economic recovery – all essential to achieving net zero emissions by 2050."

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Climate change is one of the greatest challenges we face today, and tackling it will require action from everybody. This is why we’re bringing together Government, businesses and investors in a ground breaking new partnership.

The Jet Zero Council is a huge step forward in making change – as we push forward with innovative technologies such as sustainable fuels and eventually fully electric planes, we will achieve guilt-free flying and boost sustainability for years to come."

The projects set to receive funding will work on developing new technologies that could help companies switch to more energy-efficient means of production, use data more effectively to tackle the impacts of climate change, and help support the creation of new green jobs by driving innovation and growth in UK industries.

The package includes: • £139 million to cut emissions in heavy industry by supporting the transition from natural gas to clean hydrogen power, and scaling up carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology which can stop over 90% of emissions being released from industrial plants into the air by storing carbon permanently underground • £149 million to drive the use of innovative materials in heavy industry; the 13 initial projects will include proposals to reuse waste ash in the glass and ceramics industry, and the development of recyclable steel • £26 million to support advanced new building techniques in order to reduce build costs and carbon emissions in the construction industry

• Launching a New National Space Innovation Programme backed by £15 million initial funding from the UK Space Agency, which will see the first £10million go towards projects that will monitor climate change across the globe, which could protect local areas from the impacts of extreme weather by identifying changes in the environment • Opening up bids for a further £10million for R&D in the automotive sector, to help companies take cutting edge ideas from prototype to market, including more efficient electric motors or more powerful batteries Chaired by the Transport and Business Secretaries, today’s first ever Jet Zero council meeting will discuss how to decarbonise the aviation sector while supporting its growth and strengthening the UK’s position as a world leader in the sector.

The members will look at how to work across their sectors to achieve these goals, including through brand new aircraft and engine technologies. These could include using new synthetic and sustainable aviation fuels as a clean substitute for fossil jet fuel, and eventually the development of electric planes.

One year on from taking office, today’s announcements form part of the PM’s wider efforts to ensure the UK meets its legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050, whilst also driving forward a green recovery from the pandemic.

So far this year, this includes committing to consult on ending the sale of new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars by 2035 or earlier; launching the Transport Decarbonisation Plan to cut emissions across the sector; providing over £1 billion at Budget to support the rollout of ultra-low emission vehicles in the UK via support for a super-fast charging network for electric vehicles; and committing up to £100 million of new funding for research to develop a brand new clean technology, Direct Air Capture.

Over the past decade, the UK has cut carbon emissions by more than any similar developed country. In 2019, UK emissions were 42% lower than in 1990, while our economy over the same period grew by 72%.

Read the full article here | Source: gov.uk

• A £10 million boost for state of the art construction tech which will go towards 19 projects focused on improving productivity and building quality, for example, re-usable roofs and walls and “digital clones” of buildings that analyse data in real time

NEWS:

AROUND THE CHAMBER

NEWS:

AROUND THE CHAMBER

Extension of the Jobs Support Scheme To date, the JSS has co-funded between 25% to 75% of the first $4,600 of gross monthly wages paid to each local employee for a period of ten months, covering wages up to August 2020. Sectors that are more severely affected by travel restrictions and safe distancing measures as a result of COVID-19 have received higher JSS support.

Extension of JSS As announced in the Ministerial Statement on Continued Support for Workers and Jobs by DPM and Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat on 17 August 2020, the JSS will be extended by up to seven months, covering wages paid up to March 2021. This will provide continued support for businesses and workers amidst the protracted economic downturn. JSS support levels will be tapered based on the projected recovery of the various sectors. See Table 1 for an overview of the revised JSS schedule.

Employers can refer to the IRAS JSS website (go.gov.sg/ jss) for more details on the computation and payment schedule. For further assistance, please fill in the form at go.gov.sg/payout or call the hotline 1800-352-4728 (8 a. m. - 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday).

Read the full article here | Source: Ministry of Finance.

Enjoy summer flavours from England with A Casual British Summer at Anti:dote

Those who have been missing the delights of JAAN by Kirk Westaway can experience some of his culinary magic until the

delicious Crispy Cheese Wafers or Pickled English Cucumbers, all which pay homage to the range of classic British pub snacks.

30th September with the casual summer menu at Anti:dote.

Finish the meal with our Editor’s highlight of the menu - a British strawberries and Devonshire clotted cream Eton Mess dessert, with cream that tastes as light as air.

For the Devon-born chef, the menu is a collection of dishes inspired by his memories growing up in England during the summer, featuring highlights such as his take on Fish n’ Chips, Irish Dry Aged Beef Steak, Berkshire Black Pork Loin, the British Scotch Egg and more. Those looking for something to pair their beer or Pimms Cup with can order a variety of snacks which includes Curry Salted Fries, Dry Aged Smoked Beef, the

For more information and reservations, please call +65 6431 6156 or visit www.fairmont.com/singapore/dining/antidote/.

JAAN by Kirk Westaway reopens at the end of August, for reservations visit www.jaan.com.sg/book-a-table/reservation.

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Diageo Partners with WaterAid to Provide Clean Water in Myanmar’s Urban Communities

Diageo Southeast Asia, a global leader in alcohol beverages, has announced a new partnership with WaterAid, an international non-governmental organisation that helps get clean water and decent toilets to communities around the world. The partnership will support the launch of a women-led project to provide access to clean water, improve livelihoods, and build stronger communities in townships of Yangon, Myanmar.

This project marks the first partnership between Diageo and WaterAid in Southeast Asia, and reflects a strong global partnership between the two organisations for many years. It is

Marlborough College IB Diploma Results 2020

An outstanding 100% success rate is being celebrated by Marlborough College Malaysia’s 2020 International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme candidates who again surpassed global and Asia-Pacific benchmarks.

MCM candidates’ average score of 35

Diageo’s largest single investment in a sustainability and society project in Southeast Asia, underpinning the company’s commitment to deliver longterm positive social impact whilst growing its business responsibly. The project aims to give 10,000 people access to clean water in households and healthcare facilities through women’s social projects. A further 30,000 people will be reached indirectly through promoting clean water and prevention of diseases.

In response to COVID-19, the project will follow Government rules on prevention and social distancing. WaterAid Myanmar has been running public awareness campaigns since February in response to the pandemic, which has included television broadcasts aimed at improving good hygiene awareness.

water treatment systems, enabling them to improve their livelihoods, stimulate the local economy, and provide clean water in their communities. Alongside learning new business skills, there will be education on menstrual health and good hygiene, such as handwashing with soap.

One in five people in Myanmar lack access to clean water. In rural communities a lack of water treatment and delivery systems has proved detrimental to women, children, and those with disabilities, and this project will provide such facilities to help improve access to safe drinking water. Local university students will also undertake regular water testing and monitoring in and around the project areas as part of research on water quality data for development work and to promote the importance of clean and safe water in the communities.

Starting in June, the project will provide educational and entrepreneurial opportunities in periurban Yangon, where a large number of women migrant workers from rural communities reside due to employment opportunities in garment factories. However, a large cohort of this population still struggles to access their basic need of clean drinking water and decent toilets. Responding to this, women will be encouraged to sell clean water produced by newly-built

The project, costing 200,000 GBP in total, will run over a 27-month period and WaterAid Myanmar will work in collaboration with the Yangon City Development Committee, relevant local government authorities and local communities to ensure areas in most need of clean and safe water are reached.

points is the equivalent at A-Level of A*A*A and far exceeds a world average of 29.7 and the Asia Pacific average of 33. Of the 62 IB Diploma candidates at MCM, 13 achieved scores over 40 points, which represents 21% of the IB cohort which is more than twice the global average of 10%.

plans to travel to the ancient University of St Andrews in Scotland to study Computer Science and Mathematics.

The perfect MCM pass rate of 100% compares favourably with 80% worldwide, and 90% in the Asia Pacific region.

This year, Marlborough is delighted that four candidates shared our highest IB Diploma score of 43/45.

Yasmin Abdul Razak has declined an offer from Oxford to study Liberal Arts at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania; Adrianna Adam Malik plans to study International Management at King’s College London; Nannarelle Hundertmark will go to the Netherlands to study Medicine at the University of Groningen and Sophia Ho

Celebrating life, every day, everywhere.

Mr Alan Stevens, Master of the College, said: “We are thrilled by the success of our girls and boys. These results are a richly deserved reward for their ambition, hard work and resilience in what was a most demanding year.

Their beaks have inspired and taught them well and that is why at Marlborough everyone completes IB: we do not reserve the best school qualification in the world only for perceived high achievers. Yet we do not have a highly selective intake because we believe that everyone can succeed, so the stellar achievements of these young men and women owe everything to the synergy that they and their teachers have created here.

We salute them all.”

NEWS:

MEMBER NEWS

NEWS:

MEMBER NEWS

British Beverage Company to make the new wave of highly coveted English wines accessible in Singapore

Co-founders of the British Beverage Company, Mike and Winnie Parsons, decided to take matters into their own hands and set up a new company when they became frustrated with not being able to get hold of their favourite English wines in Singapore. Realising their beloved drinks simply weren’t available on these shores, they worked every spare hour they had to create an import, distribution and retail company specializing exclusively in ‘made in England’ beverages, with wines, especially sparkling wines, being their main focus. The breakthrough moment came when two of England’s most coveted winemakers, Ridgeview and The Bolney Wine Estate, believed in their model and passion and teamed up with them.

“We are incredibly excited to be working closely with the team behind British Beverage Company on distribution across Singapore. We have identified a lot of scope and opportunity for growth of the English sparkling wine category in the Asian markets, with Singapore being a key market of focus. With the Ridgeview house style focused on purity and expression of fruit and wines that display exceptional freshness, the climate in Singapore is a perfect match for the style. We are looking forward to an exciting journey ahead." said Brandon Barnham of Ridgeview.

“The quality credentials of English Sparkling Wines are now firmly established, and producers are releasing ever-more ambitious (and expensive) cuvées from single vineyards or with extended lees age. Once the very promising 2018 vintage is released by the top houses in a few years, there is every chance of a maximum score being awarded. Sooner or later, it is inevitable.” Said Richard Hemming MW, Singapore based Master of Wine.

In recent times, English wine has emerged as an exciting disruptor in the fairly slow-paced wine industry, regularly scooping up top industry awards and critical acclaim and often at the expense of the old guard from Champagne. As the trophies accumulate and the message and recognition start to filter down to consumers, English wine’s once welldeserved reputation of being barely drinkable swill is slowly but surely evaporating – replaced by a community of fans and followers, including here in Singapore.

Many industry commentators credit Sussex based vineyard, Ridgeview, with putting English wine on the international map when it remarkably took the top spot for sparkling wine at the Decanter industry awards in 2010. Not only was this the first time a sparkling wine produced outside of Champagne had won this prestigious industry award, that it had been done by an English wine was scarcely believable at the time. Since then, English winemakers have gone from strength to strength and are pushing their segment to dizzying new heights.

“Champagne as a category, and many of the brands themselves, are extremely well known by consumers and have had decades to get to where they are. English sparkling wines, however, are gaining on them fast. For many a casual drinker and critic alike, the wine itself surpasses that of similarly priced French alternatives. The biggest challenge for English sparkling wine is educating consumers and building awareness for the category and leading brands.” Said Mike Parsons of the British Beverage Company.

You can read the full article here.

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Enjoy a staycation at the Grand Hyatt Singapore Grand Hyatt Singapore Staycation Package Experience the best of Singapore from the start of Orchard Road in your spacious 54 sqm ft Junior Suite at $250++ per night.

• Complimentary upgrade to 54 sqm Deluxe Room (Junior Suite category) • Complimentary daily breakfast for two • Complimentary high tea for two at 10 Scotts (for stays from Sundays to Thursdays in August and September 2020) • 20% Food & Beverage and room service discount • $50 spa credit • 5% Isetan shopping discount

PwC Singapore launches the PwC Academy’s Masterclasses programme Set against the backdrop of the urgent need for upskilling, PwC's Academy has partnered with three top-in-class universities - University of Oxford (Said Business School), INSEAD, and Singapore Management University - to curate a series of Masterclasses tackling topics such as advanced management, leadership, business strategy, finance, corporate governance, and risk management.

What are the courses and what do they cover?

PwC-Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Masterclass This Masterclass is tailored to support Singapore SME senior business

leaders and its emerging leaders advance their management and leadership skills. It will be tailored for the Singapore context and will be adapted from the existing renowned, prestigious "Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Programme“. Participants can expect to discover, learn, and discuss challenges and opportunities for sustaining strong performance in a globalised 21st century context.

More details on course curriculum, fees (including subsidy schemes), and faculty etc can be found here.

PwC-INSEAD Strategy Masterclass This Masterclass aims to help SME leaders and its emerging leaders understand the critical importance of having a sound strategy in place to guide their business. Based on the global best-seller “Blue Ocean Shift”, this Masterclass is designed to empower its participants with the latest thinking in strategy and how a sound strategy will drive superior performance and growth potential for their businesses. Participants can expect to be educated on the foundations of a Blue Ocean Strategy and the why and the how of innovation for SMEs in Singapore.

The Masterclass will also delve into creating new market opportunities through commercialising innovation

efforts, and how to sustain innovative cultures in the organisation.

More details on course curriculum, fees (including subsidy schemes), and faculty etc can be found here.

PwC-SMU Chief Financial Officer Masterclass Developed with senior finance leaders in mind, this Masterclass includes modules which are relevant to finance professionals, such as: corporate governance, risk management, managing IT in an organisation, financial reporting, mergers and acquisitions, and insights from practicing CFOs. The programme also serves as a platform for senior finance professionals to exchange knowledge and experiences and understand and explore potential solutions to the challenges facing the finance function and the organisation.

More details on course curriculum, fees (including subsidy schemes), and faculty etc can be found here.

SkillsFuture Funding These masterclasses all qualify for SkillsFuture funding. For Singaporeans / PRs, course subsidies start from 50% of the course fees, and can go up to 90% (if you are above 40 years old).

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AB MAURI AB Mauri is a business devoted to the baking industry and has strong heritage going back 150 years in yeast and bakery ingredients. With 52 plants, operations in 32 countries, sales in over 100, and research and technology centres in the Netherlands and Australia, AB Mauri’s businesses are dedicated to their local markets, both in terms of opportunity and demand and are backed with global expertise in bakery products, technologies and know-how, supporting and enabling the world's bakers, both small and large. Find out more at www.abmauri.com Representative Member: Douglas Elliot, Managing Director

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RECENT EVENT WEBINARS

RECENT EVENT WEBINARS 04 June 2020: Creating Elite Performance with Former Footballer Paul McVeigh Our Leadership, Talent & Professional Development​ Committee were delighted to host a webinar with former footballer Paul McVeigh on 4 June.

11 June 2020: Digital Networking During our first virtual networking session held on 11 June 2020, our Committee Chairs gave an update on what they have planned for the coming months. Watch now on the replay.

16 June 2020: Opportunities and Support for Trade & Investment in SEA with HMTC Natalie Black A webinar session on trade and investment on SEA with HMTC Natalie Black, Simon Baptist of the Economist Intelligence Unit, Mark Worthington of Klareco Communications.

18 June 2020: Sustainable Business: Kickstarting a Decade of Action On 18 June, we reviewed of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals​ and how your business can play a part.

24 June 2020: Introduction to Digital Forensics On 24 June, we explored the practices and discipline of digital forensics with former Head of the Merseyside Police Computer Crime Unit, Frank Butler.

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30 June 2020: Climate Change & Financial Risk On 30 June, we explored this topic with S&P Global, SingTel, and The Warren in a webinar moderated by Financial & FinTech committee member Russell Toop from Cheshire Consultancy.

01 July 2020: Engaging and Communicating with Teams during COVID-19 On 1 July, High Commissioner Kara Owen joined speakers from Facebook, Sage and the Ministry for Trade & Industry in a webinar moderated by Don Rapley from our Leadership, Talent & Professional Development committee.

08 July 2020: Data Protection in a COVID-19 World Our Financial & Fintech & ICT Committees bring you a webinar on Data Protection laws & regulations, artificial intelligence (AI), data behind contact tracing apps during COVID-19 and more.

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20 July 2020: In Conversation with Jeff Mostyn, Chairman, AFC Bournemouth A special webinar with Chairman of AFC Bournemouth, Jeff Mostyn as he shares with us his journey with the club including AFC Bournemouth's promotion to the Premier League for the first time in its history and what the future holds for the club after the 19/20 season.

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RECENT EVENT WEBINARS 21 July 2020: Energy & the Circular Economy This webinar discussed concepts and ideas for improved resource efficiencies and how policies might be put in place to implement them.

22 July 2020: The Changing Economic Outlook: Healthcare Industry in South East Asia On 22th July, we discussed how COVID-19 has impacted healthcare systems in the region as it goes through COVID-19.

23 July 2020: Future Cities Digital Networking Our second digital networking event featured presentations from Arup, The Carbon Trust and Mott MacDonald, organised by the Built Environment, Energy & Utilities, Sustainability, Transport, Logistics & Supply Chain and ICT Committees.

28 July 2020: Optimising Social Media Marketing On 28th July, our Marketing and Communications committee hosted a webinar with practical and useful insights on social media marketing including optimisation, PPC and influencer marketing.

13 August 2020: Leadership in Asia: Navigating Global Markets Our LTPD Committee hosted a webinar on leadership intelligence in Asia, aiming to inspire global leadership through stories from Singapore.

18 August 2020: Future Cities post COVID-19 Following our Future Cities networking event, we hosted a discussion on how future cities will need to innovate, challenge and respond to the needs of people, while considering climate agendas.

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UPCOMING EVENTS & WEBINARS Visit our Upcoming Events page at www.britcham.org.sg/events to find out more about the following events, or contact the events team at events@britcham.org.sg

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01 Sept 2020

Developing a Hydrogen Economy

4:00 PM 5:30 PM

03 Sept 2020

Tax Strategies and Planning for Returning to The UK

4:00 PM 5:00 PM

07 Sept 2020

Celebrating Diversity Photography Competition Winners' Virtual Presentation

6:00 PM 7:00 PM

22 - 29 Sept 2020

International Women's Day: The Virtual Conference

Varies

29 Oct 2020

21st Annual Business Awards Virtual Awards Ceremony

6:00 PM 8:00 PM

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UPCOMING EVENTS & WEBINARS

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

Understanding Singapore’s Technology Aspirations

By Lucy Haydon, Editor, Orient Magazine When you think of technology, what comes to mind? The latest gadget you are coveting? Or the new SaaS tool that you've created for your clients? Revolutionary technology means different things to different people, yet without the creative space to innovate, develop and test ideas, evolution cannot take place. In this article, our Editor reviews the technology and investment ecosystem in Singapore.

To put Singapore's digital expectations into context, we begin by considering the nation's level of digital use, which provides such a highly connected testbed for new products and services in the region.

In We Are Social's annual research released in January of this year(1), internet users had increased by 5.3% since 2019, reaching 5.14mn. 84% of Singaporeans are now online, spending an average of 7 hours per day connected. 1.5x the total population (8.56mn) have mobile connections, which account for over half of all web traffic - an increase of 1.7% on the previous year. In fact Singapore came fourth of 79 countries in the Global Connectivity Index 2019(2). The average Singaporean spends over US$3,000 per year using digital payments - a total value of US$12.31bn in consumer payments made digitally. Social media use has reached 79% penetration, with 4.60mn social users, a 1.6% increase since 2019.

This year, the SG Digital Office has been launched to accelerate further digital adoption in the community post COVID-19. With a goal to equip people and business with the digital tools and skills they need for the new world postpandemic, the SDO has prioritised the senior community and local stallholders at launch.

Singapore’s technology aspirations are published within the Digital Economy Framework for Action and the Infocomm Media Industry Transformation Map (ITM). To achieve the published goals, listed below, the framework drilled down into talent development, R&D, the local infrastructure and governance.

• To digitalise every industry and business, raising productivity and efficiencies as a way to grow the economy.

• To sharpen the nation's competitive edge by supporting companies to leverage on digital technology.

• To transform the infocomm media industry to be a key driver of the economy and with a secondary aim of adding 13,000 jobs by the end of this year.

84% of Singaporeans are now online, spending an average of 7 hours per day connected…. providing a highly connected testbed for new products and services.

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Source: www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-media-landscape/ SGDigital/Digital-Economy-Framework-for-Action

For the latter goal, the Infocomm Media Development Agency (IMDA) focused on four key areas for the development of the nation's technology expertise. The ITM focused on helping sectors to adopt technology, exploring growth in the four identified areas, and building local talent.

Specifically, Singapore is looking to develop niches within the research and development of AI, building local capabilities and focusing on collaborations. In talent development,

For businesses, since January of this year the second edition of Singapore's AI Governance Framework has been open for consultation. The framework is intended as a sector and technology agnostic approach to guide internal governance procedures, the level of human involvement in AI-augmented decision-making, operational elements and the communication of, and feedback on, internal AI policies.

Working with the World Economic Forum, the IMDA has developed an Implementation and Self-assessment Guide of Organisations (SGIsago) as a companion to the planned framework.

the AI SG programme is a partnership between the IMDA, the National Research Foundation, the Smart National and Digital Government Office, the EDB, SGInnovate and Integrated Health Information Systems to increase the level of knowledge and skills in the local workforce. As part of the programme, the NRF is investing SG$150 million over five years(3).

In addition, the Digital Services Lab is an engineering team working with Government, Institutes of Higher Learning and research teams to deploy technology capabilities for industry.

APIs, source codes and databases are made available to industry via the Open Source AI libraries, though only two data sets are currently available.

Artificial Intelligence

The Economic Development Board positions the country ready for investment by focusing on an ecosystem which includes worldleading global technology firms.

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

Cybersecurity Singapore's focus for cybersecurity advancement is to increase the resilience of its infrastructure to cyberattacks. The region's first cybersecurity start-up hub, ICE71, aims to strengthen Singapore's ecosystem and mitigate risk through the attraction and training of new talent, providing market access, and connection opportunities with partners. The Cyber Security Agency focuses both on the national security element as well as training and public awareness campaigns, as society continues to move increasingly digital.

To broaden the local skillset, SkillsFuture training, postgrad scholarships and talent programmes are available.

Immersive media Referring to technology such as virtual reality, mixed reality and augmented

reality, immersive media in Singapore is typically used in industry for training simulations, education, design and media. The immersive media sector is anticipated to play an important role in Singapore’s future digital economy, contributing over US$209bn by 2022(4).

Enterprise Singapore are working with small businesses through the SME Centres to develop scalable solutions and demonstrating widespread applications of the technology. While the pandemic has put on hold some elements such as the physical scans of spaces, there is increasing interest in the sector(5).

Internet of Things IoT combines information technology, telecommunications, big data and data analytics to create value across all sectors and elements of modern society. The network of items and devices which are embedded with software and sensors is rapidly

expanding, with a resulting expansive gathering of datasets. The IMDA focuses on reducing the costs of sensors and lengthening their life cycle, developing partnerships and working closely with those in the cybersecurity sector to protect the data streams generated by IoT devices.

The immersive media sector is anticipated to play an important role in Singapore’s future digital economy, contributing over US$209bn by 2022.

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Source: Singapore’s Tech Ecosystem - Economic Development Board

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

Source: Singapore’s Tech Ecosystem - Economic Development Board

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Attracting Global Investment Rarely does a month pass by without the public announcement of investment or development in the technology industry in Singapore. The Economic Development Board positions the country ready for investment by focusing on an ecosystem which includes worldleading global technology firms such as Google, who launched in Singapore in 2007 with 24 people and now consider the country as their regional hub, with around 1,000 employees; and regional leaders such as Grab, who have established a US$100mn R&D centre.

To support major investment decisions for industry-leading global players, the Tech@SG programme, delivered jointly by the EDB and Enterprise Singapore, facilitates the entry of global technology talent for eligible fastgrowing companies to establish their core teams. Recent years have also seen an increase in companies choosing Singapore to build out regional data centres, leading to the establishment of a Data Centre Park in order to attract further investment.

(1)

wearesocial.com/sg/digital-2020singapore

(2)

www.huawei.com/minisite/gci/en/ country-profile-sg.html

(3)

www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-medialandscape/SGDigital/tech-pillars/ Artificial-Intelligence

(4)

www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-medialandscape/SGDigital/tech-pillars/ Immersive-Media

(5)

www.businesstimes.com.sg/sme/

Are you a UK technology firm interested in the opportunities in Singapore?

Further information and support from our Trade Services team is available, including market research, virtual trade mission support and business matching.

Complete the enquiry form at www.britcham.org.sg/expandyour-uk-business-into-singapore to start the conversation.

FEATURE:

UNDERSTANDING SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGY ASPIRATIONS

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

Content Moderation and Online Platforms: An impossible problem?

By Jamie Andrew, Senior Associate, Clifford Chance Every day globally, around 5 billion YouTube videos are watched, 500 million tweets are posted, and 95 million posts are shared on Instagram. Social media platforms have been subject to less direct regulation given their roles as "passive intermediaries", in comparison to typical content creators such as broadcasters or newspapers. How is this content moderated?

Content moderation, the act of monitoring and withdrawing published information, is particularly challenging in online environments where the information is partially or wholly derived from a large, diverse, and diffused user base.

Traditionally, social media platforms have been subject to less direct regulation given their roles as "passive intermediaries", in comparison to typical content creators such as broadcasters or newspapers. Under laws such as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996, in America, or the EU eCommerce Directive in Europe, social media platforms have been exempted from liability for illegal content they host.

With the increasing proliferation of fake news and new technologies such as deep fake algorithms, there are increasing calls for new, specific regulations and in the case of Facebook, the issue has prompted a large-scale boycott from advertisers.

The coronavirus outbreak has amplified this issue; industry and government stakeholders are worried about medical disinformation spreading. This concern has accelerated government intervention in the form of emerging legislation and prompted an overhaul of the traditional content moderating toolkit.

The second tension is centred on liability and responsibility for policing.

Should the platform be responsible and therefore absorb the cost and resource requirements of content moderation?

Would this disincentivise platforms from hosting content?

How Does Content Moderation Currently Work in Practice?

The Big Picture There are two fundamental tensions in this area.

The first is the debate between freedom of speech and quality of information. For example, while hate speech, defamation or content that endangers children is regulated, there is a grey area of content which, while not directly infringing laws or regulations, can nevertheless be harmful. Misinformation campaigns can damage democratic processes and in the time of COVID-19, can lead people to unsafely rely on bogus medical advice.

There are currently three main approaches to content moderation. Very few platforms rely on just one of these methods. The most common approach before the coronavirus outbreak was to rely on automated review model algorithms as the first line of defence and use human reviewers (either from the user base or professionally hired) to correct the mistakes made by the automated review model.

Manual/Human Moderation This model relies on a large team hired by the platform to manually review the

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content themselves. Platforms draft a content policy that users subscribe to by virtue of using the platform and moderators remove content which doesn't comply.

The system is not fail-safe as there are often grey areas, but policies have been refined over the last few years and moderators are trained to distinguish between permissible and impermissible content. Currently, this is the most accurate method of content moderation.

The moderation process typically occurs once the content has been posted to the platform ("postmoderation") although in some cases it is vetted beforehand ("premoderation"). Not surprisingly, premoderation is less popular as users expect instantaneous communications.

As users drive revenue, user experience is prioritised on platforms and postmoderation is used, increasing the risk of exposure of inappropriate content.

Automated Moderation

As artificial intelligence and machine learning has developed, automated moderation is increasingly being deployed. It is cheaper than human moderation and processes large volumes of information faster than humans can.

There are ongoing challenges to accuracy, despite significant technical advances, including where nuanced ethical choices are involved as algorithms struggle to make the "right" choice.

moderation is where the community appoints their own moderators. Reddit is a classic example of this type of moderation, where each content channel (a "subreddit") is monitored for spam by a volunteer from within that online community. This can be effective; it requires minimal investment from the platform and leverages the benefits of a motivated subject-matter expert, with an awareness of context, who can respond quickly and accurately.

Covid-19 and the Rise of Automated Moderation

User Moderation A different form of human moderation; the user-based method relies on members of the online community policing themselves (e.g. Wikipedia). At its simplest, there is a reporting function where content flagged by users is passed to the internal review team.

Since the start of the pandemic, online companies have begun to drastically increase their use of automated tools as social distancing rules have limited the number of human reviewers who can work together.

Another form of user-based

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

YouTube announced that it "will temporarily start relying more on technology to help with some of the work normally done by reviewers" with Facebook and Twitter making similar announcements.

While these platforms previously partially relied on AI/machine learning tools to manage content, the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the roll-out of these tools on an unprecedented scale and required companies to develop specific COVID-19 techniques.

This has presented several challenges.

Without the layer of human moderators, the automated tools are mistakenly capturing far more information than they should. Twitter's algorithm was flagging tweets containing the words "oxygen" and "frequency" as requiring a COVID-19 fact-check despite the unrelated subject matter.

Facebook was criticised for stopping users from sharing articles from mainstream papers such as The Atlantic or Buzzfeed, as their software had flagged the posts as spam. Despite increasing technical progress, the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the current limitations of pure automated

moderation.

There are ongoing challenges to accuracy, despite significant technical advances, including where nuanced ethical choices are involved as algorithms struggle to make the "right" choice.

Emerging Global Legal Response Although a handful of specific content moderation laws existed before the coronavirus pandemic began, they were not customary. Many countries have viewed the COVID-19 crisis as precipitating an immediate need for drafting new laws.

On 28th May 2020, President Trump issued an executive order demanding the creation of a uniform approach to content regulation and requiring an overhaul of existing internet liability law. The order makes explicit reference to the spread of misinformation via

online platforms on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for introducing the order but as of yet, no new policy has emerged.

Europe has also been active on this front, with new laws being introduced in several nations. In Europe, Hungary's parliament passed a law that allows for the imprisonment of people "considered" to have spread false information about coronavirus. Bosnia and Herzegovina is also introducing fines at the regional level for publication of fake news or unproven allegations which may "cause panic and fear among citizens" on social media as well as in print press. However, both of these examples target the users rather than the platform.

France has proposed a different approach. On 13th May 2020, it adopted a new law against online hate speech, which specifically imposes requirements on platforms (see our previous article on the law). The law echoes the existing Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz law in Germany (the "NetzDG law") which came into force in January 2018. The NetzDG law required online platforms with over two million users to remove

37

"manifestly unlawful content" (including defamation and hate speech) within 24 hours and produce a transparency report twice a year recording the removal process and requests for takedowns.

Although there is no reporting obligation under the new French law, the removal obligations are very similar: online intermediaries must remove hateful content within 24 hours and terrorist propaganda within one hour.

Failure to do so could result in fines of up to 1.25 million EUR. At the time, the European Commission voiced its criticism and requested postponement of the legislation. Just over a month after the law was passed, the French constitutional court overturned it, on grounds of infringement on free speech (see our previous article on the court ruling). The court also considered that the narrow time frames do not give intermediaries enough time to either identify or remove material and seek to turn online platforms into arbiters of free speech rather than the judiciary fulfilling this function.

Meanwhile in the UK, the House of Lords has been pushing for an "online harms

bill" although no draft legislation has yet been proposed (see our previous article on the Online Harms White Paper).

The introduction of new laws throughout the coronavirus outbreak has sharpened the debate on the level of responsibility online intermediaries should take for content on their platforms.

Emerging Commercial Response Platforms are increasingly facing challenges from revenue and commercial perspectives, as well as from a legal perspective. Recently, Facebook has come under fire from advertisers as over 800 major brands, including Unilever, Ford and CocaCola, announced that they were pulling their advertising spending from Facebook over its failure to tackle hate speech. Although these companies make up a small fraction of Facebook's advertising revenue base, the market has responded strongly to the boycott: the company's market value dropped by $75 billion (more than the combined market capitalisation of Twitter Inc. and Snap Inc.) Brands are seeking increased transparency and third-

party verification from Facebook. The company is quickly seeking to respond and has announced that it will undergo an audit by the Media Ratings Council, a media accreditation firm.

How Companies Are Responding to Content Moderation Challenges As regulators and legislators bring in new laws to specifically regulate platforms and the moderation of their content and advertisers increasingly are making their spending contingent on platforms doing so (see for example the Facebook boycott), this will further accelerate platforms need to invest in, develop and implement range of alternative forms of moderation. New measures have been introduced to mitigate the weaknesses of purely automated moderation.

Labelling Firstly, there is a focus on labelling rather than on removing content. For example, Twitter has created tailored labels for tweets relating to the 5Gcoronavirus conspiracy, leading users to an article fact-checking the theory.

Facebook has taken a similar approach, labelling content with fact-checking

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

stickers and subsequently giving users discretion as to whether to view the content.

Controlling Monetisation A second tool is controlling monetisation: stopping content on certain topics or containing misinformation from being monetised by the content creators. This approach is only relevant for certain types of platforms (such as YouTube or Spotify) where content is shared on the platform by users for the express purpose of generating ad-revenue which is then shared between the platform and the creator.

YouTube historically offers monetisation, as default, on all videos added and then selectively demonetises videos or channels if they breach the community policy. The platform has taken the opposite approach during the coronavirus pandemic: all coronavirusrelated videos would not be monetised as default, but creators could then apply for ad-revenue certification.

This shows a marked policy change from YouTube and it is to be seen whether it applies this strategy more broadly in the platform and whether other platforms adopt similar approaches.

Enhanced Human Moderation Facebook is also revisiting the concept of human moderation – in November 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of an Oversight Board to govern its content decisions.

Comprised of experts from diverse fields, who are formally appointed and administrated by an independent trust, the Oversight Board will review appeals on content which users believe was wrongfully removed by Facebook's content moderators, once they have exhausted Facebook's internal appeals process.

Facebook can also refer content decisions to the board which are particularly difficult and will have significant impact in terms of severity, scale and relevance to public discourse. Facebook will be required to implement the board's decision (unless it infringes local law), even if it disagrees. Facebook will also formally consider and publicly respond to content policy recommendations proposed by the board. As the Oversight Board is yet to review a case, whether its decisions will have a tangible influence or impact on content on Facebook remains to be seen.

However, while there is scope for future expansion of its powers, the board currently only has jurisdiction over content which has been removed by Facebook. The Oversight Board would consequently have no jurisdiction over misinformation spreading about the coronavirus, if Facebook allows such content to remain on its platform.

Conclusion Digital content platforms, and particularly social media platforms, have a unique position in facilitating an increasingly global network of users, content producers and advertisers to publish, use and process unprecedented amounts of content and data. There is increasing regulatory and commercial scrutiny on the role of such platforms in managing and safeguarding its participants and its content; the pandemic is only accelerating this issue.

Deployment of emerging technology is increasingly seen as a means to address to the platforms' challenges, however in its current form, it is unlikely to be the whole solution.

Ioana Burtea, Trainee, TMT, contributed to the writing of this article.

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More about Talking Tech

APAC Tech Partner Leads

Global Tech Team Clifford Chance's cross-practice, global team are experts in technology law, applying significant regulatory and industry insight against the backdrop of new technologies being developed every day. We have been advising technology industry leaders for many years and work with a range of technology developers, vendors and users on their major transactions, disputes, antitrust and regulatory issues. As these businesses have developed, so have we.

Luke is a partner in our Corporate group in Singapore and head of the Asia Pacific Technology group. Luke provides strategic, commercial advice on all forms of complex technology matters, including payments and FinTech matters, outsourcing, commercial contracts, cloud computing, content licensing and distribution, data privacy and cybersecurity, with particular expertise advising on cross border commercial transactions. Luke is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales. He is recognised as a leading lawyer for TMT in Singapore by Chambers Asia Pacific 2017, 2018 and 2019.

At Clifford Chance we recognise that rapid advances in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, blockchain, big data and cyber security are significantly impacting our clients' business models, their growth strategies and even day-to-day decision making, bringing opportunities to be harnessed and risks to be navigated.

Ling is co-head of Clifford Chance's APAC Tech Group, head of our Intellectual Property Group in Asia Pacific and CoHead of our Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice in China.

She is a core member of the firm's global Tech Group with particular focus on IP, cyber, tech disputes and risk management. Ling has spent over 20 years advising clients on intellectual property related matters. Her expertise covers the full spread of contentious and non-contentious intellectual property, trademark and patent portfolio management in Hong Kong, China and around Asia.

We work with clients in the major global technology hubs, fielding sector experts across our extensive network of offices.

Integrated and dynamic, our Tech Group is a single global team delivering strategic tech law advice to help clients stay ahead of the curve and outstrip the pace of change.

Paul Landless is a partner in our Singapore office who is co-head of our Tech Group and one of the key global leaders of our Fintech practice.

His focus is financial markets technology, algorithmic trading, crypto markets, artificial intelligence, smart contracts and DLT uses in financial markets trading, risk management, treasury and payments.

Paul is a member of the global Panel of Recognised Market Experts in Finance Foundation (P.R.I.M.E. Finance) based in the Hague.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jamie is a Senior Associate in the TMT team in the London office. He is experienced in negotiating strategic commercial contracts, including in the context of transactions and technology procurement, and regularly advises on contemporary and emerging technology issues, data regulation and exploitation and cyber incident preparedness and response.

Jamie advises clients across a range of sectors including technology, sport, private equity and financial services.

ABOUT THE COMPANY Clifford Chance is multi-national law firm with over 3,700 lawyers based in 35 offices around the world, comprehensively covering all of world's major financial centres. Find out more at www.cliffordchance.com

FEATURE:

CONTENT MODERATION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM?

FEATURE:

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNANCE EXPERTISE IN SCALE-UP TECH SUCCESS

The Importance of Governance Expertise in Scale-up Tech Success

By David Carswell, Client Director, Corporate Services, Hawksford & Fabio Stella, Associate Director of Sales & Business Development, Hawksford In this article, we’ll investigate what every promising scale-up must consider if they wish to graduate from a scrappy start-up to a lucrative scale-up.

Every tech start-up that survives to become a ‘scale-up’ has needed to continually prove its resilience, flexibility and mettle in overcoming the many hurdles to growth.

Once a business has achieved a reasonable size, however, many boards face both new challenges and an uncomfortable realisation. A lack of global expertise and inability to illustrate effective governance, become major barriers to further success, or new rounds of funding.

Simply put: the self-sufficient qualities that were essential for an early growth start holding promising tech scale-ups back.

What higher tier investors look for in the balance sheet, strategy and executive team of a scale-up tech business is fundamentally different from how they evaluate start-ups. Larger, more complicated businesses need formal, rigorously tested and sustainable finance and admin practices and need to prove they have carefully considered the jurisdictions in which they operate and how they structure them.

Tech founders who have enjoyed freedom from oversight must learn to suppress their self-sufficient problemsolving habits and seek help. This is about more than heading off unanticipated tax or regulatory burdens, with access to experienced and knowledgeable support, businesses establish a far more secure basis for long-term success.

evaluate potential and growth with a very different lens than those specialising in start-up businesses.

... the selfsufficient qualities that were essential for an early growth start holding promising tech scale-ups back.

Below we will investigate what every

For example, when Two Rocket backed companies - Digital Services SG FIVE and BlueNest - wanted to expand into Asia, Hawksford aided their operations by preparing financial accounting reports, overseeing the care of their payroll and completing the tax filing.

Beyond alleviating administrative burdens so they could focus on growing their business, these companies were able to present their strategies in an attractive and clear format.

promising scale-up must consider if they wish to graduate from scrappy start-up to lucrative scale-up.

Help investors measure the business Investors in scale-up businesses

Investors want to know an experienced, professional eye is looking at the company’s revenue. They will gauge the presentation of how the business has secured its position, prepared for entry to additional markets, responded to evolving user needs, and even how it is evaluating the ‘stickiness’ of the customers that underpin revenue.

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Preserve and protect what makes your business unique As every scale-up business knows, privacy and discretion are crucial to preserving a unique proposition. While opening parts of the business to more scrutiny may be what investors want, most scale-ups will be wary of revealing every aspect of their business, lest they risk losing a hard-won advantage over other market players.

It may be years before many scale-up businesses consider a public offering of shares, where the requirements for transparency and accounting become far more rigid. But in those critical years leading up to an IPO, preparing a higher standard of financial statements and presentations, not for public consumption is an important indicator of a business’ maturity.

Scale-up businesses should seek partnerships with organisations which have effective and proven track-records of preserving the interests and privacy of their clients. As advisors to corporations, family offices and high net-worth private individuals,

businesses like Hawksford have built their reputations on understanding of the value of discretion in effective partnerships.

divesting a business of employees is costly and can be particularly painful for scale-ups which have established close working ties.

Equally important is securing the right financing for the stage of your business. Hawksford works with leading VC Funds and specialist lenders that are attune to the financing requirements of businesses at all scales from start-up to IPO. These lenders and VC Funds not only provide financing but a level of experience that often drives growth earlier on in a lifecycle.

With many companies trying to operate on leaner budgets and headcounts, choosing a qualified outsourced accountant is a great investment, and businesses’ first step towards a lower and higher-value workload.

Stay flexible by outsourcing Many scaling businesses succeed by operating with small, nimble and adaptable teams. As they grow, however, trying to solve every problem in-house becomes a burden.

Scale-up growth doesn’t always follow a linear path. If a business needs a larger workforce, it can take significant time to hire new employees and get them settled into the organisation.

Equally, if growth in a market slows,

Externalising accounting, tax and legal functions lets a scale-up business continue to operate flexibly, while benefiting from large teams of skilled professionals. It also allows them to reduce headcount and present a tighter and more focussed P&L sheet for investors.

Thinking about taxation Taxation is another consideration that looms larger and larger for a growing business. For tech companies, the particular speed by which they bring

FEATURE:

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNANCE EXPERTISE IN SCALE-UP TECH SUCCESS

FEATURE:

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNANCE EXPERTISE IN SCALE-UP TECH SUCCESS

their products abroad only exacerbates the problem.

It is therefore imperative for technology companies with global ambitions to think early about a plan for managing multiple tax jurisdictions. Establishing a foothold in a jurisdiction with an established structure to support tax neutrality can significantly smooth the route to international growth.

There is an additional advantage in access in the most well-established beneficial tax-regimes: decades of accumulated expertise. In regions such as the Channel Islands, where Hawksford is headquartered, companies are within easy reach to a far greater range of potential board members with established specialist knowledge of any technology sector.

Make connections and bolster your boardroom The importance of showing a high calibre of experience and sector knowledge at the boardroom cannot be overstated. As businesses expand, investors are comforted to know that a business has sought the advice of individuals with a proven track record of helping companies grow.

Technology thrives in ecosystems where networking and collaboration are encouraged. Digital Jersey, for

example, is an independent body which has been actively cultivating one the of the world’s most vibrant digital communities. In 2019, Jersey boasted over 400 digital businesses, and over 3,000 professionals in digital tech roles. This means that growing tech businesses are opened to an extensive and focused community where they can bring in senior viewpoints and build more resilient strategies.

Opening up - new processes, new markets, new relationships

ABOUT THE AUTHORS As Head of Corporate Services in Jersey, David leads a team of highly experienced professionals to provide a wide range of corporate services to entrepreneurs, businesses and large financial institutions alike. A key driver of Hawksford’s international strategic business development plan, David has built a global network of lawyers, tax advisers, investment houses and other intermediaries who work together to deliver expert services to a global base of new and existing clients.

Part of Hawksford pool of professionals since 2013, Fabio now heads China's Business Development activities while acting as Financial Responsible Person & Company Supervisor for several Chinese subsidiaries of Global Retail clients.

Reaching scale-up stage is a tremendous achievement for any business, and only happens as a result of hard work, a clear vision and a passionate executive team.

Scaling up your business should never feel like abandoning your values, but it does require mental fortitude. Inviting the right advice is a significant change, but it’s also the best way for scale-up business to keep exploring exciting new markets and opportunities, solving the problems it was founded to address.

ABOUT THE COMPANY Hawksford is a leading provider of corporate, trust and fund administration services. We help clients to make the most of their business decisions and their wealth by taking on the burden of regulatory, financial and tax compliance, corporate governance and reporting obligations. We have helped families to take care of their wealth, entrepreneurs to succeed, multinational companies to operate and transact, and funds to maximise their returns. With our unrivalled expertise and Asia know-how, our on-the-ground team of professionals across Europe and Asia have helped businesses from across the globe start, manage and grow their business in Asia.

Find out more at www.hawksford.com

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The Changing Nature of Mobility

By Kerry Andrews, Head of Sales (Asia), McLaren Applied Pte Ltd Transport, and the way we travel, has been one of the most significant changes in recent months. We have also seen an increased focus on emissions, and changes to how we interact with urban spaces.

It is driving the emergence of new mobility solutions for individuals & public transport.

FEATURE:

THE CHANGING NATURE OF MOBILITY

FEATURE:

THE CHANGING NATURE OF MOBILITY

Asia-Pacific is home to the world’s fastest growing economies, and investment in infrastructure and transportation is seen as a key driver for growth. It plays an important role in the development of the region, at both a national and international level, and provides access to economic and social activities and opportunities for individuals as well as businesses, helping to link suppliers and consumers.

Given the increasing demand for urban mobility, due to rapid urbanization and rural-urban migration, Asian countries and cities need to initiate integrated policies and invest in improved urban infrastructure, public transport systems and services. The shift to more sustainable modes of transport and increased efficiency in transport operations are key to making this happen.

Advances in Technology, Urbanisation, Population Growth, Policy and Customer Expectations are all collectively

changing the nature of mobility, not just in Asia, but globally.

• Technology in the form of autonomous driving, increased connectivity, the electrification of vehicles, and shared mobility will change the way we engage with mobility.

• Urbanisation is expected to continue in many developing economies and will create underlining issues linked with the urban mobility of passengers and freight.

• Customer Expectations will increase the need for on-demand services with seamless mobility becoming a core requirement.

Mobility providers will need to be more customer-focused, tailoring services and adapting operations to secure revenue and customer loyalty.

• Population Growth will be linked with demands in mobility, and increased consumption, whilst an ageing population will be associated with accessible, inclusive mobility.

Technology has enabled mobility providers and transport users to rethink their user experience. Customer loyalty has been replaced by user experience and a willingness to pay for that personalised experience. Consumers happily interact with digital technologies and expectations continue to increase; whether that is buying a car, booking integrated travel services in one app, or expecting customised, bespoke services based on previous spending behaviour and travel habits.

• Policy whether industry-led or environmental will continue to shape the future of mobility.

But the mobility industry is not just deploying innovative solutions to meet the requirements of today’s

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customers. Developing use cases for emerging technologies will allow them to keep one eye on the future.

As automotive technologies advance, new use cases for electric vehicles will emerge for both passenger and commercial vehicles. From micromobility, mass transit & marine, to the pioneering technology of urban air mobility, electrification will transform how we embrace mobility.

Automotive manufacturers and suppliers are already using digital twins for product development.

Transport providers are creating virtual operations, looking at daily operating requirements, timetables, capacity, maintenance & resources.

Businesses are using technology to optimise their operations and build resilience and trust in to future operating models by anticipating ‘what if’ scenarios, leading to improved decision making, increased reliability and better performance.

The data required to run these scenarios and make these improvements has always existed. But by using technology, we are now able to capture the raw information in real time, make sense of it, share it, and leverage it to make better choices – for the business and for the consumer.

Lower costs from technology improvements and shifting consumer demand will surely open up the mobility market to new players in the future, including well-funded start-ups who will be looking to disrupt, challenging incumbents and encouraging them to up their game to stay competitive – great news for consumers.

The last few months have shown us just how quickly an event can change behaviour, expectations and values.

The working world, family time, leisure activities and mobility have all radically changed in a way which we could never have anticipated.

Transport and the way we travel has been one of the biggest changes of

recent months. Safety and well-being have become paramount on public transport, we have seen a rise in car usage as people turn away from mass transit options and the much-debated e-scooters which were previously viewed as a hazard on our city streets, have increased in popularity, often allowing key workers to reach their place of work.

we have been in a period of unprecedented change with increasing autonomy, widespread electrification and the emergence of ownership models that change how we view and use vehicles.

The same is true for logistics. Rail freight services increased in order to transport essential goods and medical supplies and last mile delivery continues to grow in popularity as people increasingly rely on ecommerce solutions in place of a physical shopping experience.

While Covid-19 continues to pose a huge challenge for transport operators, responding to these challenges will ultimately better position urban transport networks. By incorporating artificial intelligence and advanced data collection to predict movement, distancing and overcrowding,

FEATURE:

THE CHANGING NATURE OF MOBILITY

FEATURE:

THE CHANGING NATURE OF MOBILITY

congestion can be greatly reduced which will encourage passengers to return and importantly, feel safe whilst travelling. A valuable example of how technology can create a positive social and business impact.

But it’s not just Covid-19 that is driving forward change in this sector. For some time now in the mobility sector, we have been in a period of unprecedented change with increasing autonomy, widespread electrification and the emergence of ownership models that change how we view and use vehicles.

The increased focus on emissions, and

changes to how we interact with urban spaces, is driving the emergence of new mobility solutions for individuals & public transport.

Population Growth will be linked with demands in mobility, and increased consumption, while an ageing population will be associated with accessible, inclusive mobility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Based in Singapore, with over 25 years of private and public sector experience across a broad range of developed and emerging industries, Kerry is Head of Sales (Asia) for McLaren Applied Pte Ltd, leading client engagement across the areas of Motorsport, Automotive and Public Transport, building collaborative partnerships and creating sustainable, data-driven technology solutions. Kerry works with global market leaders across the Asia-Pacific region to create digital strategies and products which enable businesses to understand complex environments, manage critical assets and optimise operational decision-making.

Agile business models that allow businesses to react fast and adapt when faced with unpredictable changes, collaboration and cross-industry technology and knowledge transfer will all be critical to address future mobility challenges, whatever they might be. The pace of innovation and technology adoption in the mobility sector does not seem to be slowing and even when faced with challenges on a global scale, the industry adapts, and recreates itself for the road ahead.

ABOUT THE COMPANY McLaren Applied presents a unique approach to improving transport. By drawing on decades of experience in optimising the performance of highspeed vehicles, we deliver advantage by maximising asset availability, capacity utilisation and multi-modal interconnectivity. We take a holistic systems view, which combines edge technology with transformative condition and decision insight, to digitally enable transport systems and help fleet operators to achieve seamless, end-toend intelligent mobility solutions. Find out more at www.mclaren.com/applied

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Matters of Opinion: Technology Technology has been advancing industry and our lives for many decades. How has technology driven positive impacts in your industry/business, and secondly, if you could wish for the next industry-changing piece of tech today, what problem would it be solving?

Lara Quie, Founder and Owner, Lara Q Associates “My discovery of the virtual meetings application called Zoom has been life changing. Until February this year, I had never used it, but within a short space of time I discovered its user-friendly nature and capabilities. As someone who has recently launched an executive coaching and consulting business, I find that Zoom has greatly contributed to my client reach and efficiency. I am using the virtual platform to work with clients globally. This has expanded my reach and market from what would have been an in-person local market here in Singapore, to literally millions of people. I save time on travel by being able to schedule more virtual meetings in a day. I am also able to use the technology to conduct webinars and interviews as well as record videos and audio files, which can be turned into podcasts. It has never been easier to connect and serve customers worldwide. I’m excited about harnessing this technology to help my new business grow. As for improvements on this technology, it would be good to integrate some form of CRM system within Zoom and possibly a way of sending attachments within the platform to webinar attendees.”

MATTERS OF OPINION:

TECHNOLOGY

MATTERS OF OPINION: TECHNOLOGY

James Price, Director, Premier Group “Do you remember the days when ‘throw money at the problem’ was the solution to most IT challenges at work? Well, that’s clearly not how 2020 has continued.

Technology today seems to be dominated by meeting apps. Zoom still leads the way - so long as you don’t have any security concerns - otherwise it’s Teams, WebEx or Blue Jeans. Naturally there are other entrants and I expect a big leap forward in technology in all these apps as they try to out compete each other.

So, watch this space. From my point of view the big changes we have seen is in business solutions such as workflow approval that can be requested and approved on a mobile device. I appreciate that this is big in the U.S. but it’s been slow to catch on in Asia.

Also, there are two other solutions which are very exciting. They are: • AI (which isn’t really AI but clever process algorithms) that can allow, say, the automation of invoices. For example, a supplier can email through their invoice. The system then automatically identifies the email, scans the invoice and extracts the PO number, invoice number and date, sub totals, tax and total amount. This is then forwarded to an approver (with a link to a copy of the original invoice) and if approved is then updated into the company’s accounting software. If there are any irregularities this is then forwarded to someone else to view and fix the problem.

• The ability to have chat bots. These clever things are computer programs that is designed to simulate human conversation. They can quickly link to a database to give a uniquely personal experience to a client. However, this needs careful thought and a detailed understanding of the stats, so that if done well, you can give the client an excellent customer experience. The downside is that if you are not careful you can alienate them very quickly.

Finally, we have seen a sudden rise if clients requiring project management solutions. Demand has been relatively quiet over the last four months. I’m unsure if this rise is because of companies having deferred their decision; if it’s because we have some new solutions, or, if as a consequence of the end of the lockdown, companies are reassessing how they do projects. It does seem that companies can no longer throw extra resources at a problem. In addition, there is a greater need for clear visibility about each project, an understanding if resources are over or under worked, and a need to identify a project’s value so that it can be prioritised against other projects. And managing change through project management has never been more important. So expect to see some clever(er) use of technology in the near future.”

Duncan Fraser, Engineering Director, Crane & Lifting Solutions Pte Ltd “In the traditionally low-tech industry of cranes, lifting and handling, the introduction of high technology has tended to lag other industries.

However, once instigated, its introduction has seen steadily increasing integration into all aspects of the industry and has had far-reaching effects. In terms of lifting equipment operation, cranes, hoists etc, some very high-tech systems are now commonplace where none existed before.

Ever more ‘smart’ solutions are delivered with cranes and hoists, both offshore and land based, such that the lifting asset owner has access to the most up to date operational systems comparable with any other modern industry. This has led directly to much more streamlined maintenance regimes, increased safety, much lower instances of downtime and far higher productivity. This trend is set to continue with the advancement of technology such that the industry is on par with any of its peers in terms of technology, its application in problem-solving and advancement of the industry.

With the advancement in technology comes the possibility of solutions to issues/concerns within the industry. While many legacy issues have been addressed, areas remain which would benefit from an application of technology. An area of concern would be that of qualification/competency in the lifting and handling industry. Safe lifting is important wherever lifting takes place. The myriad of qualifications, requirements, training, licenses and competency recording which are involved in the certification of personnel to be involved in the industry makes on-the-spot checking a very hit and miss affair. I’m certain that with the technology available today, coupled with the emergence and management of ‘Big Data’, a way could be found to instantly verify credentials, qualifications and competency at the worksite such that they are positively matched with the lifting professional on site. If this technology could also be used to help streamline the documentation around certification and competency, then this would be a bonus and would underpin an already improving situation around lifting qualifications and competency, on a global scale.”

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Stephen McNulty, President, Asia Pacific and Japan, Micro Focus

Mark Teal, General Manager, Singapore, Mezzo Labs

“Technology is an exciting field where innovations bring about an imagined future. It touches our lives from healthcare, banking, F&B, services, digital wallets, to e-currencies; all easily available on our mobile devices. In the software world, we continue to be fascinated to push the envelope of advancements in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, and how these can be embedded elegantly into solutions that are helping enterprises transform digitally. Unlike headlinegrabbing robots that have patrolled the streets to maintain safe-distancing in some countries, innovations in software are often tucked quietly into the “behind-the-scene” works, such as optimising organisations’ daily operations, enabling timely services launches for customers, securing customer transactions and data, as well as analysing behaviours to continue improving operations and customer services. Personally, a future technology I would like to see is one providing more seamless interoperability between all the various consumer technologies and platforms that currently exist today.”

“Technology has allowed businesses of all shapes and sizes to grow exponentially with much lower overhead costs. Data analytics is a great example of this – up until very recently, companies would have relied on large teams of data scientists to build complex mathematical models and algorithms to help their companies better predict certain outcomes to drive growth. But today, we can now produce the same results with a far leaner team thanks to machine learning solutions that already have pre-built algorithms to do the heavy lifting. The bigger challenge, however, is how to leverage these insights to power the wider business – really an operational and application problem.

What we’d love to see next is ‘what’s next’ from an automated and intelligent operational system to remove the process of sharing and distributing data analytics within an organization, and enabling businesses to actually act upon them as quickly as possible.

Although Mezzo Labs has been at the forefront of this new world, trying to help our clients become more competitive by enabling them to implement such processes into their businesses, we don’t believe we’ve yet created the complete answer!”

Lucy Dillon, Chief Knowledge Officer, Reed Smith “We have found that technology has helped us streamline and improve the production of legal documents – which is a core component of what lawyers deliver: the advent of automated drafting, e-signatures, online proofreading tools and reference checkers has helped us to produce quicker, cheaper, more consistent, more tailored documents and therefore better outcomes for our clients. The industry-changing piece of tech I would wish for today is on its way: the deployment of Artificial Intelligence for legal document review has been accelerating over the last 5 years, and is showing signs of becoming the promised game changing tool to accurately triage, review and remediate contracts. Again, this will speed up one of the core tasks of a legal team: the ability to review and report on contract portfolios, speeding up a transaction process.”

MATTERS OF OPINION:

TECHNOLOGY

FEATURE:

AUTOMATION AND DATA INTELLIGENCE: SHIELDING BUSINESSES FROM COVID-19 IMPACT

Automation and Data Intelligence: Shielding Businesses from COVID-19 Impact

By Stephen McNulty, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Micro Focus As countless aspects of our modern lives rush online to slow the spread of COVID-19, businesses have new mandates and opportunities to strengthen their network infrastructure and modernise their IT services to accommodate a surge of digital interactions.

Stephen shares his insights in the latest of a series from our ICT Committee members.

On the topic of digital transformation, experts often recommend clearly defined goals and long-term planning.

Conversations tend to revolve around technological disruptions and competitive time-to-market, but no one can predict how the global pandemic might come into play.

Today, as countless aspects of our modern lives rush online to slow the spread of COVID-19, businesses have new mandates and opportunities to strengthen their network infrastructure and modernise their IT services to accommodate a surge of digital interactions. In fact, a recent IDC report predicted that the ongoing global pandemic will accelerate the modernisation of critical infrastructures and the ubiquity of contactless business and services.

Customers and online users routinely enjoy a rich and dynamic set of capabilities via their tablets, smartphones, and laptops, and they now expect the same from the businesses they patronise or work for. Hence, an exceptional user experience will help organisations minimise disruptions and maintain business-as-usual operations

as much as possible during this period.

The IT team has assumed the role of a strategic value creator – as opposed to a cost centre – powered by a multifaceted and broad technology portfolio ...

This means that feature-rich modern apps, which perform well and have no downtime, are now the foundation for any digital business. The IT team has assumed the role of a strategic value creator – as opposed to a cost centre – powered by a multifaceted and broad technology portfolio touching on the four key pillars of digital transformation: enterprise DevOps, hybrid IT management, security, risk and governance and predictive analytics. Identifying an ecosystem that can deliver depth and breadth

across these pillars is naturally a key first step.

Incorporating emerging technologies into the digital transformation engine is another priority for those seeking higher levels of organisational agility and resource optimisation – a must during these uncertain times. AIOps and its ability to deliver more intelligence and automation to business operations could be the answer.

AIOps, short for Artificial Intelligence (AI) for IT Operations, is the application of big data analytics and machine learning to IT operations data to intelligently identify patterns and augment common processes and tasks.

This technology proves especially useful amidst the ongoing explosion of data as more transactions take place online. AIOps solutions provide analytics-driven capabilities in-house experts need to sense, analyse, and adapt automated operations across IT landscapes in a hybrid cloud environment with speed and precision, far surpassing what is humanly possible.

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AIOps and its ability to deliver more intelligence and automation to business operations could be the answer.

Real-time visualisation of business and IT parameters across complex IT environments is another benefit of AIOps tools. Comprehensive dashboards allow business leaders to closely monitor and collaborate with IT to make strategic decisions faster to keep the company competitive.

When investing in AIOps, it is important to select a solution that boasts advanced monitoring and automation capabilities, supports integration across different cloud environments,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR As president, Asia Pacific & Japan at Micro Focus, Stephen McNulty is responsible for managing Micro Focus’ business and setting the company’s strategy for growth, performance and profitability across the region. Prior to joining Micro Focus, Stephen held roles as the managing director, Asia Pacific for Progress Software; president, Asia Pacific for JDA Software; and various senior management positions at Oracle Corporation.

and most importantly, comes with a framework that is compatible with selected business models.

Reaping the benefits of added automation, intelligence, and agility, companies that bet big on AIOps will have a tremendous edge in mitigating disruptions and making the best use of their resources. With the pandemic altering the global economy, outlooks of markets hinge on those organisational capabilities.

ABOUT THE COMPANY Micro Focus delivers enterprise software to empower our 40,000 customers worldwide to digitally transform. With a broad portfolio, underpinned by a robust analytics ecosystem, the company enables customers to address the four core pillars of digital transformation: Enterprise DevOps, Hybrid IT Management, Predictive Analytics and Security, Risk & Governance. By design, these tools bridge the gap between existing and emerging technologies so customers can run and transform at the same time. Find out more at www.microfocus.com

FEATURE:

AUTOMATION AND DATA INTELLIGENCE: SHIELDING BUSINESSES FROM COVID-19 IMPACT

FEATURE:

IS NOW A GOOD TIME TO OUTSOURCE YOUR OFFICE MOVE?

Is Now a Good Time to Outsource Your Office Move?

By Sebastian Ponniah, Founder, Prime Place In this article, Sebastian Ponniah outlines the pros and cons of managing an office move internally or contracting external expertise, in the context of the changing needs of the workplace post COVID-19.

Moving office for a business is a similar experience to a domestic move, in the sense that it can be stressful and take a huge amount of time. There are so many components, so much planning ahead needed and time-sensitive activities that require deadlines to be met. Just one part of the process failing can jeopardise the whole project and lead to delays which ultimately impact the company’s bottom line.

In other words, an office move is a major project no matter the size of the business, so who is best placed to undertake such a project from your team? Does your company have the inhouse resources and expertise required? MNCs are likely to have their own qualified RICS professionals to manage all their real estate. However, SMEs lack the resources and specialist expertise. In most instances, the HR manager or the Office Manager is assigned to mange the office move, but is this the ideal best practice? In this article I will explore the choice of internal versus external resourcing.

Today’s business environment has changed dramatically with COVID-19 and businesses are adapting to remote working. Whether businesses adopt a

flexible working policy will depend largely on productivity and if it suits the business. The opportune moment to evaluate your company’s workspace requirements, particularly taking into account safe distancing measures and partial remote working of your workforce, is well before the lease expiry. Getting expert advice can save your business money and doing the move properly from the start will ensure over the length of the lease works out more cost effective.

The opportune moment to evaluate your company’s workspace requirements, particularly taking into account safe distancing measures and partial remote working of your workforce, is well before the lease expiry.

The process begins with finding the best possible new premises, and approaching an estate agent is the traditional first step. In Singapore, it is typical for agents to show a prospective tenant any property regardless of which agency has listed it. The agent is incentivised by commission paid by the landlord, and given they can show any property available in the market, they share commission with the other agent if a transaction is concluded. The loser in this process could be the tenant, because although the agent is confident that they can find a property, they may be insufficiently incentivised to do so and not allowed to represent both sides of the same transaction. This conflict is recognised in the Estate Agents (Estate Agency Work) Regulations 2010, which states that “No salesperson or estate agent who is a natural person shall, in respect of the same property, have as clients both vendor and purchaser or both landlord and tenant.”

Ultimately the agent’s client is the landlord. Who then is looking after the tenant’s interests? If managed using inhouse resources, an agent’s free office search is appealing on face

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value because it comes at no cost, but keep in mind the constraints outlined above.

Just one part of the process failing can jeopardise the whole project and lead to delays which ultimately impact the company’s bottom line.

Managing an office move properly requires a specific skillset and a huge amount of time. By undertaking this in-house, you are diverting attention away from your business activities and resources become distracted by the lengthy process – often several months of intensive work and in some cases over a year from beginning to end. Furthermore, an office lease is a major financial commitment and every dollar saved on your premises impacts the bottom line of your business. The cost of moving into the wrong building,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sebastian holds a degree in Real Estate Management from Oxford Brookes University, UK. He worked in London's prime (£2m - £15m) residential property market for a while until the market crash of 2008. He then joined the family firm leasing shipping containers and asset management. In 2012 he moved to Singapore to run Asia Pacific sales and operations and all the while was responsible for all the company’s office moves and has been finding office space and managing office moves in London, Jersey (C.I.) and Singapore. His most recent accomplishment was completing the RICS Certificate in Commercial Real Estate.

or even the right building on the wrong terms, has huge consequences to the company. By outsourcing you are engaging a third party’s expertise and experience to get the job done properly, and with the least disruption to your business.

Perhaps COVID-19 is the cause and effect, and now we can appreciate the benefits of best practice, rather than continue with standard practice, in the context of an office move.

ABOUT THE COMPANY Prime Place is a boutique commercial real estate company managing the entire office move process exclusively for tenants. Our value proposition is helping businesses through their office move to do it smarter, hassle-free and to save money. We provide advice on best practice to prepare and organise packing of your contents which is a unique benefit only available at Prime Place.

Leave unwanted furniture behind and we will donate it to a community project as part of our commitment to being socially responsible and sustainable. Book a free consultation on our website at www. primeplace.sg

FEATURE:

IS NOW A GOOD TIME TO OUTSOURCE YOUR OFFICE MOVE?

EXPERT OPINION FROM OUR COMMITTEES

Let's Discuss...

Energy and the Circular Economy Contributed by the Energy & Utilities & Sustainability Committees. Additional contributions by Pieter Eijsberg, Shell and Seth Tan, Infrastructure Asia.

The requirement for energy efficiency has been clearly established. While this must continue, focus should shift towards resource efficiency - a move away from the Take-Make-Waste model.

By-products of energy production need to be re-purposed or recycled – this is known as the circular economy. Current commercial models reward energy producers by volume, and typically do not build into the price the value of dealing with waste.

representing Singapore, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Governments and corporations should create policies and goals aimed at reevaluating the alignment between what constitutes value and the pricing and costing models that underpin them.

There needs to be consideration of all stakeholders in how energy is resourced and priced. Post COVID-19, reconstruction of our economies will increasingly focus on environmental and social values and is likely to accelerate global action along these lines. This impacts every aspect of human society – not just climate change.

The webinar discussed concepts and ideas for improving resource efficiencies and how policies might be put in place to enable them to be implemented under the broad themes of:

BritCham’s Energy & Utilities and Sustainability & Responsibility Business Committees were delighted to bring together in July a panel of expertise

• Seth Tan, Executive Director, Infrastructure Asia • William Hudson, Head of South East Asia, The Carbon Trust • Peter Godfrey, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Energy Institute • Pieter Eijsberg, General Manager, Front End Development Downstream Projects, Shell

• How is the circular economy developing?

• Has the conversation shifted from energy efficiency to resource efficiency?

• Does the circular economy have a role to play in building a more resilient post COVID-19 world?

Within the context of energy and other extractive resources the concept of "resource" efficiency, as opposed to

"energy" efficiency, forms the basis of such thinking. The circular economy should be examined not only from the point of view of emissions' reductions, and energy efficiency in terms of enduse utilisation, but also from the perspective of creating more efficient and effective utilisation of the actual resources that go into producing energy in the first place.

An internal combustion engine, for example, is less than 25% efficient. This is typical of most carbon molecules turned into energy. An example of improving efficiency rate in a value chain is a combined cycle gas power plant which would run at approximately 65%+ efficiency. This type of power plant reuses the heat created from burning gas. The efficiently produced electricity can then power electric vehicles.

Europe is moving to circular economy principles in its policy planning, including new legislation for sustainable product design, reuse, repair and recycle. Introducing taxes as a lever alongside legislation and regulation based on the concept of circularity in production processes e.g. in the chemicals sector. Combining this

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at wholesale and retail levels should lead to reduced premature obsolescence and waste reduction.

Europe has six important and wideranging sectors in focus, Consumer Electronics. Packaging, Plastics, Textiles, Construction, and Food Services; aiming to have regulations and white papers in place by 2021.

The circular economy is as much about procurement as about waste and recycling. Green and sustainable procurement are areas where companies will need to develop policies.

Taxation will be a tool. However, this is not about tax and cost. There is value to be made from the circular economy. “’Resilience’ and ‘Sustainable Development’ will increasingly resonate from the halls of power through to all of us as producers and consumers alike, with the so-called circular economy underpinning much of this rhetoric.”

- Peter Godfrey, Energy Institute.

Supply chains have been dominated in recent times by cost reduction. The dilemmas of the past were business agility and “just in time”. Now, COVID-19 has forced governments and

companies put security and continuity higher up the agenda. With the need for contingency in the system could we see a shift to “just in case”?

The COVID-19 crisis and the political, economic, and social disruptions it has caused have exposed the inadequacies of our current economic systems. Amid global concern for lives, livelihoods, and the planet, leaders find themselves at a historic crossroads for shaping the recovery and are challenged to reset economies on a new trajectory of more inclusive and sustainable growth.

- Peter Godfrey, Energy Institute

concept of global commodities such as oil and LNG. We may see a trend of deglobalisation of energy. Solutions in Asia will be different to those in Europe and the Americas with new models much more regionally focussed. This will be part of the reengineering of business as it focuses beyond the pandemic e.g. healthcare and agriculture will need to employ people based on regional expertise.

“Most of the world recognises that unsustainable use of resources has triggered critical scarcities and caused climate change and widespread environmental degradation – all of which have negative impacts on the well-being of the planet and its people, but at the same time, more than 10% of the world’s population continues to live in extreme poverty, unable to meet even their most basic needs.” - Peter Godfrey.

Is capitalism bust? Inequalities exist globally in consumption patterns and resource constraint. The poorest 10% are responsible for 5% of environment impact. The richest 10% account for 40% of impact.

Energy has been driven in the past by

EXPERT OPINION FROM OUR COMMITTEES

EXPERT OPINION FROM OUR COMMITTEES

Society, the environment and quality of life will become key measures of how we operate going forward.

Seth Tan, Executive Director, Infrastructure Asia (InfraAsia) outlined challenges facing infrastructure development in the region. In ASEAN only 10% of projects are financed by the international private sector, out of a total regional investment in infrastructure of around USD210 billion per annum. As a comparison, private sector infrastructure participation in the western world is around 50-60% of the total.

There is a huge opportunity if more projects can become bankable. InfraAsia acts as a project facilitation office to support Singapore-based companies on regional development of sustainable infrastructure projects. It seeks to combine new offerings and include multilateral agencies to contribute to capacity building and knowledge sharing. InfraAsia has around 500 partners in its ecosystem and develops new finance structures including blended finance.

Finding receptive partners and counterparts to go on this renewed journey post-COVID-19 is key, especially in the Public Health, Clean Energy, Info-commstechnology and Logistics sectors.

Better project preparation is important.

Therefore, even during this period of travel restrictions, InfraAsia continues to work closely with regional government to make marginally bankable projects bankable.

It is important to come up with newer approaches. For example, InfraAsia is working with its MOU partner, Asian Development Bank, to come up with innovative financing tools to catalyse more clean energy projects, particularly in ASEAN. Focusing on newer areas like floating solar is also important. InfraAsia recently organised a webinar on floating solar with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS), which received a lot of interest.

InfraAsia also helps to “chip away” bankability issues through capacity building. Half-day, or two half-day, catalytic workshops help familiarise regional counterparts with the ideas they need to adopt to create an enabling environment that can attract the private sector and MDBs.

Three examples of projects from around the globe: 1. Conversion of plastic waste to chemicals.

Single-use plastics and their disposal is a well-recognised issue. Shell is a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a not-for-profit organisation which brings together people, businesses, governments, and organisations to find new ways to rethink, recover, and recycle plastic waste. Shell is also exploring process technologies that could transform post-use plastic into useful liquids that could be used as a source of energy, as chemicals or as new products.

One of its steam crackers in the US is a testbed for the use of feedstock made from plastic waste using a specialised heating technique to make a range of chemicals. The technology, known as pyrolysis, is considered a breakthrough for hard-to-recycle plastics and advances Shell’s ambition to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemicals plants by 2025.

2. Green hydrogen and mobility.

In the Netherlands, a project is exploring hydrogen and its use in mobility. This project involving Shell, highlights a chicken and egg dilemma which is also valid for circular economy initiatives. Cleaner fuels transport will not arrive until the infrastructure is there whilst an initial project cannot finance all the infrastructure on its own. In this case green hydrogen would be produced at scale in one of the world’s largest electrolysers from electricity generated by a 750MW offshore wind farm – a third of the generated electricity is directed to hydrogen production. Built in the North Sea – cables come onshore in the western Netherlands. Government plans for large scale Hydrogen production, targeting a 3GW electrolyser park and is bringing together multiple players via the Port of Rotterdam to facilitate land, infrastructure, permitry and helps ensuring financial hurdles can be met. The green hydrogen can initially be used in refining duties replacing conventionally produced hydrogen so the synergy helps kick start the chain to mobility. Very similar hurdles have to be overcome in other circular economy initiatives: required scale of supporting infrastructure needs initial help to kickstart pilot schemes.

3. Refineries are exploring the re-tasking of hydro processing facilities to produce biodiesel and bio jet.

Feedstocks that could be used include used cooking oils, tallow and other vegetable oils, fats or greases. As biofuels are sold to solve overall CO2 emissions it is important that logistics are organised to minimise CO2 emissions in collection of feedstocks. Control of carbon intensity of the full chain from collection of feedstocks to pre-treatment and hydroprocessing is therefore important to maximise the net CO2 reduction effect.

The goal for these projects is the use of waste streams which can be processed in existing mobility infrastructure, refining value chains and in chemical facilities. These change-of-feedstock models can be run in parallel then transition to play a greater contribution over time. The energy transition process is not binary but a road to net zero.

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Seth outlined three areas where capacity building can assist the public sector through familiarisation with private sector insight: 1. To facilitate circular economy thinking in ASEAN, it may be good to start looking the system, not single points in the project value chain.

Systemic developments include master planning at a larger scale e.g. by grouping districts of commercial and non-commercial developments into a zone to increase project viability and financial attractiveness for private investors.

2. Focus on efficiency should be made on improving all aspects of the value chain and not just focusing on the end waste. In many ASEAN hinterlands, the common challenge is sufficient space for landfills.

Adopting waste-to-energy technology, where suitable, helps to reduce landfill needs to 10%. Hence, adoption of suitable solutions upstream can mitigate challenges in the downstream. However, there are challenges for some solutions, including cultural issues to consider.

For instance, when recycled water was first introduced in Singapore, treated water was first sent to industry before residential adoption.

This initial adoption by industry

helped create the long-term business model.

3. The need to adapt to local situations. ASEAN has a dynamic, young 650 million strong population. However, each country is different and the adoption point and readiness for new technology enabling circularity varies. For example, in Singapore the new Tuas Nexus project will maximise resource and energy recovery from the treatment of used water and solid waste. It is suitable to adopt Tuas Nexus technology now as the country has gone through the waste-to-energy journey.

Technology is often an enabler.

Today, it does not have to be expensive, e.g. better use of data can improve O&M and reduce resource wastage, even at the planning stage.

What are the next steps that countries in ASEAN could adopt? One area is taxation. Governments could move from regressive to progressive tax policies, i.e. tax the right things to drive new behaviour. Tax regimes can support resource efficiency if tax is aimed at all resources - production and consumption - not just carbon.

sector involvement is lack of scale.

Scaling suitable projects and simultaneously building local capacity allows for appropriate allocation of risk and enables finance-ability.

Seth highlighted the need to start by tackling bankability issues as ‘lowhanging fruit’. Success breeds success.

For example, buildings in Singapore have been rated under the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Scheme for over 15 years to ensure sustainability and resource efficiency.

This holds throughout the project lifecycle, from design, selection of materials, construction as well as operations and maintenance, for example, 99% of construction waste is recycled.

In 2018, about $4.1bn of green loans/ green finance was issued and this almost doubled in 2019, with one-third of the proceeds used on buildings. This shows that there is abundant interest by financiers and investors to deploy their funds into green infrastructure.

With a strong ecosystem to develop resource efficient buildings, this could be another of the ‘low hanging fruit’ to benefit regional infrastructure.

Another area holding back private

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EXPERT OPINION FROM OUR COMMITTEES

Governments in a post-COVID world will be seeking all finance levers. The ASEAN region is traditionally conservative on policy development. The time is right for governments to prioritise pilot projects.

Multi-participant models will make sense. Countries prefer to invest when there is a good track record, so achieving first past-the-post project development policies in place is needed.

Green deals and stimulus packages can point to the direction of how money can be successfully channelled. Not all projects will work, so once a project does work it needs to be scaled up.

Clean energy is an area which could be 100% privately funded if structured well.

Governments play an important role in creating an enabling environment and hence capacity building to assist in familiarisation with the essential building blocks would be helpful.

Combined with newer approaches, InfraAsia plans to assist regional governments to bring in private investors. What is missing in ASEAN is a series of opportunities.

One-off projects cannot achieve the ambitions of the region to support its growing populations. Devolved capability and capacity building are required. An example is scaling up the

hydrogen economy. Initial projects require collaboration and high subsidies. Systemic problems such as collecting plastics-waste over large distances at volume may require adaptation so that there is more localised processing of waste to avoid transportation over large distances.

ASEAN has an unsustainable landfill problem.

While waste-to-energy is one of the solutions, upstream management of waste is another solution. With proper recycling measures, waste-to-energy would not be needed. Eventually there will not be any waste! Bottomline is that it is important to think through the whole value chain process. Right sizing is important to deal with anticipated waste produced in large urban areas and in rural areas such as palm oil waste.

When developing waste-to-energy projects involving incineration, we should also consider waste-togasification, or waste-to-value to make useful products – a more difficult but developing area. Fully integrated waste processing includes metals recovery.

How we end up with the right type of ‘useful’ waste will require re-tasking of processing units.

Green procurement is underplayed at a time of economic stress. Governments will need to focus on this. It could become a core agenda or discussion item leading up to COP26 being hosted in the United Kingdom in 2021. Enough food is produced to feed the world but 30% is wasted. It is the same for hydrocarbon and minerals industries, only 20% of extracted molecules turned into useful end-use energy. In future we will look at value chains in a different, circular, way.

Responding to this challenge will require innovative policies, redirected investment, environmentally sound technologies, international cooperation, and capacity development to support countries to transition to inclusive green economies. Producers will need to change how they design, source, manufacture and market their products whilst consumers will need to incorporate environmental and social concerns into their consumption decisions and adopt sustainable lifestyles. This has far-reaching consequences for the energy sector and infrastructure development.

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Speakers: Seth Tan, Executive Director, Infrastructure Asia; William Hudson, Head of South East Asia, The Carbon Trust; Peter Godfrey, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Energy Institute; Pieter Eijsberg, General Manager, Front End Development Downstream Projects, Shell

A replay of the discussion on the global development of the circular economy and how it could be relevant to Asia and to learn more of how Infrastructure Asia is looking forward to building a stronger relationship with British partners and bring more sustainable infrastructure to this region can be found here.

The Energy & Utilities and Sustainability & Responsibility Committees are planning more events with other business committees showcasing concepts and test sites including the hydrogen economy on September 1 2020, and later in the year on Waste-to-Energy, decarbonising Aviation and efficiency of Data Centres in the Built Environment supporting the Chamber’s Road to Net Zero campaign.

This article was contributed by Tim Rockell, Mark Florance, Peter Godfrey and Will Hudson of BritCham’s Energy & Utilities and Sustainability & Responsibility Committees, with additional contributions by Pieter Eijsberg, General Manager, Front End Development Downstream Projects at Shell and Seth Tan, Executive Director at Infrastructure Asia.

BritCham’s Energy & Utilities Business Committee consists of members based in Singapore working across the region and dedicated to building out the region’s infrastructure. Our programme of activity in 2020 has a strong focus on climate change and decarbonisation in the run up to the COP26 conference to be held in the UK, postponed to 2021. The design, operations, and the financial, legal and technical expertise needed for the power, water and waste treatment buildout in the region are the cornerstone of the committee and forms the expertise that we showcase and connect to our members. For more information, please visit britcham. org.sg/committees/energy-and-utilities The Sustainability Committee seeks to educate and showcase Corporate Responsibility (CR) issues and practices in Asia. We encourage all businesses in Singapore to have good governance in place, and to use their influence to create systemic change through collaboration and partnerships, to manage the economic, social and environmental impacts of their activities wherever they operate in the world. For more information, please visit www.britcham.org.sg/committees/sustainability

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