SPEAKERS

Rafiq is currently Managing Principal of Orkney Holdings; an international advisory firm focused on strategy and project implementation in real estate and related service-based businesses and family businesses.

Rafiq has over 35 years of senior management experience on an international level as CEO, board member of various Singapore government entities, senior adviser to corporate and government-linked clients across the region as well as private equity firms and MNCs operating regionally.

Rafiq is recognised as a business innovator having pioneered service apartments as an asset class and centrally managed shopping centres and food courts, which have both become industry standards in SE Asia. Through his various business activities, he has developed deep and wide business links in SE Asia, South Asia, UK, Micronesia, Europe and Australia.

In Strategy related consultancy work at Orkney Holdings, Rafiq has advised Government linked clients ranging from pension funds, state owned corporations and debt restructuring agencies in Malaysia to government-controlled corporations in India, Pakistan and Russia. Private sector clients have included PE funds, regional conglomerates with operations ranging from Australia to Indonesia and Micronesia and regional operations of multinational companies from the UK, Germany and Austria. He also acts as an independent expert on real estate based assignments for a major international consultancy business.

As Executive Director of family owned Scotts Investments, he grew the group, into one of Singapore’s largest Indian-family controlled conglomerates at that time, with holdings in the property, hospitality, investment banking and real estate businesses.

During his eight-year tenure as CEO of Scotts Holdings, the real estate arm of the group, he quadrupled assets from SGD 200M to over SGD 700M and listed the Company on the Stock Exchange of Singapore in 1991. He grew its employee base from 50 to over 600 as the Group’s international presence increased from a single Singapore entity to a presence in seven countries. He also initiated Asia’s first serviced apartment company, The Ascott, which eventually had nearly 1000 keys in five countries and over SGD 35M in revenues prior to its sale to Singapore’s CapitaLand. His turnaround of then-troubled Scotts Shopping Centre in the mid-1980s led to an increase in rentals per sq. ft. of 55%, shifting the location from the bottom third of Singapore properties to among the most profitable malls in the city and rated the best in Singapore by Lord Patrick Litchfield’s “Book of the Best”.

Separate from his corporate responsibilities, Rafiq was a main board member of Singapore Economic Planning Committee (1991-3). He was heavily engaged in developing “the service cluster concept” on its financial and real estate services sector strategy subcommittee. He is an honorary fellow of the National University of Singapore’s, Business School and has served at board level, inter alia, of the, the Singapore Tourism Plan Steering Group, The Singapore Tourism Board, Singapore’s National Environment Council, Sentosa Development Corporation amongst other bodies as well as on public company boards in the UK.