Team and history
OUR MENTORS AND HISTORY
Val, CFA, Senior Research Analyst
Val was an award-winning business reporter at Mediacorp before she made a successful career switch to become an analyst at Macquarie Bank. She subsequently worked as an investment analyst at Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC. She has a stellar track record of bringing out people’s potential in their pursuit of careers in investments. She is the chief mentor at Springboard.
James, CFA, Senior Real Estate Portfolio Manager
James brings with him more than 10 years of experience in investment. He oversees a portfolio of real estate investments in a listed investment holding company. Prior to his current role, he was with Ascendas Funds Management and Titan Capital Asia. He is the lead mentor in our real estate track in the Research Like a Pro program.
Keith, CFA, former Head of Research at UBS
Keith worked in research roles for over 20 years. He has previously worked as the Head of Thai Research at UBS and Head of Asian Telecom Research at Macquarie. He has a strong passion for building financial models and mentoring analysts.
Allen Cheong, CFA, CAIA, CVA, veteran investment banker
Allen Cheong, a former investment banker, has over two decades of corporate finance and investment experience across geographies, sectors and cycles, and worked in market-leading financial institutions such as DBS Bank, OCBC Bank and Daiwa Capital Markets. A veteran corporate finance professional with an established track record in fund raisings, IPOs and M&As, he actively mentors students from Nanyang Business School and CFA professionals, and conducts lectures at Singapore University of Social Sciences. He has participated as panel judge for tertiary competitions such as CFA Institute Research Challenge and Singapore University Ethics Challenge.
Ke Yan, CFA, FRM, Head of Research at DZT Research
Ke Yan is in a unique position to advise young people on career switches into the investment industry because he was an early success story of Springboard, switching from a back office IT job to investment research. With more than seven years of experience working on the sell-side and independent research, he loves to share his diverse experience and finds great fulfilment in helping students land their dream jobs. He is frequently quoted for his research work by international media such as Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and Business Times.
Zeke, private equity analyst
Zeke has over three years of experience in private equity and equity research. He oversees a portfolio of education assets in the Southeast Asia with a PE firm with AUM of over one billion USD. He successfully landed in a PE role straight after graduation from Springboard ‘s program. Prior to that, Zeke was one of the leading students in Springboard program. He enjoys imparting knowledge to motivated students who are trying to break into front-office.
OUR HISTORY
SpringBoard Program came to exist from Nov 2009, where an event at Clarke Quay welcomed its first batch of students. It wasn’t all training and work for the students, as SpringBoard also organized a networking session every few months with different groups of investment professionals, where the students and participants can learn about exclusive job and internship opportunities.
What was unspoken at that time was that our founder Yoman, a then hedge fund manager at a global investor, would actively help get his top students into job interviews and internships. We believe that the students’ passion brought them to us, and we helped them with the opportunities that we had. We believe in recommending someone only after we’ve seen them in action, not based on just CVs, interviews and verbal promises. This is why our friends and partners would enjoy working with us, keeping its good name in the industry.
As the Program grew, Yoman felt that he should bring in other industry professionals whom he thought would be excellent mentors. Yoman invited AKY, one of his top proteges, to the SpringBoard Team in 2012 and we built a strong team of mentors based on practices based training (as opposed to academic training which most institutions did).
The work done by students were no longer crucial work demanded by Yoman, but part of a structured curriculum drawn from pieces of work that an analyst would do from day to day. (Only interns who have graduated from the mentorship program would be exposed to more serious work.) We were also no longer restricted to simply equity research and would soon have more success stories in investment banking, trading and other fields. The CV and interview coaching would be more structured and focus on the interns.
Our growth to this level allowed us to take on a more appropriate name: SpringBoard Talent Management, aka SpringBoard TM.
SpringBoard Talent Management
In 2012, SpringBoard TM underwent a revamp that would lead to the incorporation of the LLP partnership, along with other functions that would become more defined and effective in growing successes in the front office.
It now has a team of mentors that covers most, if not all, of the front office functions. Interns must now undergo a stock pitch competition and work hard to meet stringent requirements to maximise their employability in the front office.
As we have groomed many success stories and alums. Many of these are now part of a close-knit community that continues to pay it forward and share more exclusive opportunities.
In 2013, we introduced classroom style foundation mentorship as an affordable option to our students.
In 2017, we revamped and expanded our curriculum which can only be enabled by latest technology for a better mentorship experience.
