News / Indicted liner chairman Teo stands down from top industry jobs

Embattled Singamas Container Holdings executive chairman Teo Siong Seng said today he would take leave of absence from his concurrent role as Pacific International Lines’ (PIL) executive chairman, after the US Justice Department (DoJ) indicted him for cartel-like behaviour with fellow container makers.

On 19 May, the DoJ indicted Mr Teo (pictured) for allegedly colluding with Chinese container-makers CIMC, Shanghai Universal Logistics Equipment (also known as Dong Fang International Container), and CXIC to raise the prices of dry containers by reducing output. The alleged actions were carried out between November 2019 and January 2024.

Chinese container manufacturers (Singamas is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but its factory is in China) produce 95% of the world’s containers, and the DoJ claims their alleged cartel-like behaviour made US consumers pay more and wait longer for goods.

And this coincided with the logjams during Covid, enabling a 100-fold surge in the container makers’ profits.

US court documents show that, days after a December 2019 meeting between the alleged conspirators, a Singamas executive reported to Mr Teo that he had reminded the others “not to be high-profile since it might violate the monopoly law or be accused of price manipulation by our customers”.

Allegedly, Mr Teo replied to the executive’s report on the meeting that “we also need to keep low-key”.

When another Singamas board member said in an email that the discussions “appeared to be anti-competition”, and suggested deleting the email chain, Mr Teo allegedly replied: “Yes I feel the same.”

CIMC chairman and CEO Mai Boliang has also been indicted, with Singamas marketing director Vick Ma arrested in France in April and awaiting extradition to the US. Apart from Mr Teo, a Singaporean, all those are Chinese nationals.

Mr Teo’s late father, Chang Yun Chung, founded PIL in 1967, but after years of pre-Covid losses, the Singapore-based company struggled and was bailed out by Heliconia Capital Management, a unit of the Singapore government’s investment group Temasek Holdings, in early 2020. The bailout restructured $3.3bn of debt, but diluted the Teo family’s stake to 15%. Mr Teo stayed on as PIL’s executive chairman.

His temporary departure from PIL, the 12th-largest liner operator, represents a growing distancing from his corporate and public roles amid the price-fixing debacle.

On 22 May, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry announced that Mr Teo had stood down from his role as chairman of the Singapore Business Federation and as a director of Enterprise Singapore, a statutory board under the government.

Mr Teo said today he would not seek re-election as SBF chairman, and was standing down from his post as the National University of Singapore’s pro-chancellor.

He said: “I have proactively decided to take these leaves of absence to afford myself sufficient time to attend to this matter [the DoJ indictment], and for the best interests of the aforementioned organisations.”