Alain Vandenborre

 

Singapore’s Evangelist

 

Belgium-born serial entrepreneur Alain Vandenborre wanted to solve the problem of high net-worth individuals treating Singapore as just a port-of-call. His solution? Getting them to keep their treasures here.

 

Born in Belgium in 1960, Alain Vandenborre was still a teenager when he won the country’s Young Scientist Award in 1978, for designing a system that transmitted Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony through a laser beam. He went on to study astrophysics at the University of Liege, and microelectonics and optical telecommunications at the University of Paris.

At the age of 26, Vandenborre set up his own company which developed the first laser system to produce microchips. The laser production system was sold to major French defence and manufacturing companies like Matra, Thales, Aerospatiale and Groupe Dassault. Thereafter, he pursued a post-graduate degree in Business Management from the University of Brussels and worked at various large multinational companies in Paris.

The first time Vandenborre came here in 1995, he was struck by Singapore’s multiculturalism. That year he travelled here again a few more times for work. To understand Singapore better, Vandenborre read feature articles of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in European magazines, as Lee’s memoirs had not yet been published. He said he was “inspired” by the statesman’s vision for the country. Simultaneously, he was attracted to life in Singapore and in 1997, he and his family moved here from Paris. He was then head of International Development of French multinational GDF Suez. “Mr Lee Kuan Yew brought me here without knowing,” said Vandenborre, who added that he often wrote to Lee to seek his opinions about domestic and world affairs.

Vandenborre was, respectively, the executive vice-chairman and chairman of the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association between 2001 and 2006. The Association was set up to promote the development of the venture capital and private equity industry and to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in the business sector. During his tenure as chairman, the number of venture capital firms in Singapore grew from 15 to about 50 companies. “I see this as my first national service to Singapore,” he quipped.

Vandenborre’s wife, Laurence, describes him as a “Singapore evangelist” because he has never given up persuading others to see the merits of the country. In 2010, Vandenborre and two Swiss partners, Yves Bouvier and Jean-Jacques Borgstedt, unveiled the Singapore FreePort, a sleek 22,500 sq-metre high-security vault that offers wealthy collectors tax-free storage, and a place to display and sell their fine art, jewellery, wine, cigars, and carpets, among other things. The FreePort is located in a free trade zone within Changi Airport. Modelled after the Freeport in Switzerland, the Singapore FreePort is backed by the EDB and Bouvier’s fine art logistics company, Natural Le Coultre.

Vandenborre understood that Singapore was working towards becoming the world’s wealth management capital, and FreePort would attract high-net-worth individuals to have “personal engagement” with the country. As he put it in a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal, “If you have money in a bank in Singapore, you might not come to Singapore. But if you have a Van Gogh here, you will.”

In an interview for the book, he added, “We don’t just want to have passive investors. There must be personal engagement. Ultra-high net worth individuals bring their friends along with them when they come. They stay for a week, start shopping around for real-estate, then, over time some move their family and children here for education, others invest in local companies.”

The FreePort has helped Singapore’s arts hub ambitions. In a 2010 Bloomberg interview, Professor Tommy Koh, as chairman of the National Heritage Board, said, “The Singapore Freeport is a golden link in the value chain to promote Singapore as a centre of art, culture and antiquities and for storage and sale of such high value items.”

Vandenborre also co-founded the Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris museum in Fort Canning Park with art historian Marc Restellini. The heritage site is a “sleeping beauty,” he said, because though rich in history, the park has been underutilised. The museum, housed in a building perched at the top of hill, is an offshoot of the renowned Pinacothèque de Paris located in Paris. In Greek, Pinacothèque means “room which contains a collection of paintings”.

The Pinacothèque museum has its own permanent collection of more than 40 rarely-seen works, including those of Spanish cubist painter Pablo Picasso, French impressionist painter Claude Monet and Dutch painter Rembrandt, all sourced from private collectors. Art from the Paris museum will also be exhibited in Singapore. The Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris occupies a niche in the museum landscape here with its mostly Western collection of art, said Vandenborre, whose favourite artist is Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte.

Since 2014, Vandenborre and his team have been setting up the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX)—the world’ s first commodity exchange for diamonds. There was previously no fixed price for diamonds and the industry was shrouded in secrecy. An exclusive group of dealers would simply gather at a wholesale market and negotiate prices of the diamonds on display, “like a fish market,” said Vandenborre.

With SDiX, there is a price discovery mechanism to monitor all bids. It lends transparency to the obscure market and facilitates investments in polished diamonds. Temasek Holdings’ subsidiary Vertex Ventures has backed this first-of-its-kind enterprise, having purchased a 20% stake in the venture.

Work has kept Vandenborre busy but he has promised Laurence that once he slows down, he will devote time to her non-profit humanitarian organisation, Red Pencil International, which uses art therapy to help traumatised patients, particularly children, deal with overwhelming life circumstances like natural disasters, being caught in conflict zones and long-term hospitalisation. It has missions in 18 countries today.

In 2002, Vandenborre—to the bewilderment of his friends—gave up his Belgian citizenship to become a Singaporean. Said Vandenborre, “They wondered why any EU citizen would give up the European passport.” He answered this question in a memoir he published in 2003. In Proudly Singaporean, he wrote, “I love the people, the cultures and—most importantly—the values of Singapore.” He also attributed his success to the guidance he has received in Singapore from a few mentors, adding, “there is nowhere else in the world I could have done what I have successfully without the support of Singapore Inc.”

References

Adam Majendie, “Wealthy Store Art in Singapore’s Tax-Free ‘Fort Knox,’” Bloomberg, May 18, 2010.

Alain Vandenborre, Proudly Singaporean: My Passport to A Challenging Future
(Singapore: SNP Editions, 2003).

Alain Vandenborre, The Little Door to the New World
(Singapore: SNP Editions, 2005 and China National Publishing Group, 2006).

Cris Prystay, “Singapore Bling ,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010.

Economic Development Board, Record 2010 Investment Numbers Momentum Expected To Carry Into 2011, January 24, 2011.

Lee Jian Xuan, “Private French Museum Singapore Pinacotheque de Paris to Open on Fort Canning with Cleopatra Shows,” The Straits Times, January 24, 2015.

Interview with Alain Vandenborre in March 2015.

 

 

Alain Vandenborre
Belgium, b.1960