Singapore’s stock market has spent years worrying about the number of companies listed on the Singapore Exchange.
But SGX chairman Koh Boon Hwee says that may be the wrong question.
In his latest annual letter, Koh argued that the number of listed companies is an “outdated metric” for judging the success of Singapore’s market.
His broader argument is that companies should be viewed through their entire capital lifecycle. A company can raise money privately, list publicly, grow, merge, be taken private and potentially return to public markets. A declining number of listed companies therefore does not automatically mean Singapore’s capital market is becoming less relevant.
That is a reasonable challenge to a metric that has dominated the discussion around SGX for years.
But it raises a more uncomfortable question.
If the number of listings is not the most important measure, what should investors actually use to judge whether Singapore has a successful equity market?
Perhaps the answer is not how many companies come to SGX.
Perhaps it is what happens after they arrive.
And this is where some recent examples become particularly interesting.
A good company coming to SGX is only the beginning
Consider NTT DC REIT.
When it came to market in July 2025, it looked like precisely the kind of listing Singapore should want.
It was backed by Japanese technology and telecommunications giant NTT, giving investors exposure to a global data-centre portfolio at a time when data centres and artificial intelligence were becoming major investment themes.
The IPO raised US$824.1 million, making it one of Singapore’s most significant listings in years. Its offer price was US$1 per unit.
Yet the subsequent market performance has been considerably less exciting.
As of Sept 28, 2026, NTT DC REIT was trading at US$0.915, 8.5% below its US$1 IPO price.
That does not mean the IPO was a failure.
The REIT’s performance is affected by interest rates, financing costs, data-centre valuations, distribution expectations and investor perceptions of the assets. Its share price cannot be reduced to a referendum on SGX.
But it does illustrate an important distinction:
Getting a high-profile company onto SGX and getting investors to consistently value that company highly are two different challenges.
Emperador tells a similar story
Emperador provides another useful case study.
The Philippines-based global spirits company, whose portfolio includes brandy and Scotch whisky brands, listed on SGX in July 2022. The company operates across more than 100 countries and has production assets spanning the Philippines, the UK, Spain and Mexico.
Again, this was hardly a company without an international story.
Yet the stock closed at S$0.385 on Sept 28, 2026, compared with S$0.45 at the end of its first trading day.
Once again, this does not prove that SGX is responsible for the share-price performance.
But it raises a question worth asking:
What does Singapore offer an overseas company beyond a listing venue?
A listing is useful only if the company gains access to capital, institutional investors, research coverage, liquidity and a sufficiently broad shareholder base.
Otherwise, the company may technically be listed in Singapore without becoming a particularly important part of Singapore’s investment ecosystem.
This is the part of Koh’s argument that deserves more scrutiny
Koh is right to question whether the number of listed companies is enough to judge SGX.
But replacing one simplistic metric with another is not enough.
If Singapore stops asking:
“How many companies are listed?”
it needs to start asking:
“How effectively does our market allocate capital?”
That is a much harder question.
A successful equity market should ideally do several things.
It should help companies raise capital.
It should provide investors with attractive investment opportunities.
It should create sufficient liquidity for investors to enter and exit positions.
It should generate research and institutional attention.
And it should give successful companies an opportunity to grow within the public market rather than eventually deciding that another market offers them better access to capital.
This is where post-listing performance and investor engagement become much more important than raw listing numbers.
The problem isn’t necessarily attracting companies. It’s attracting investors.
Singapore has already shown that it can attract sizeable and internationally recognisable companies.
NTT DC REIT is one example.
Emperador is another.
And the current policy push is clearly designed to bring more international companies and capital into Singapore.
MAS announced on Sept 29 that it would allocate another S$1.45 billion to five global asset managers under its Equity Market Development Programme. That takes allocations under the S$6.5 billion programme to S$5.4 billion across 14 managers.
At the same time, SGX is pursuing initiatives including the SGX-Nasdaq Global Listing Board and other measures designed to deepen Singapore’s equity market.
The policy response therefore appears to recognise something important:
Singapore doesn’t just need more companies. It needs more capital and more investors willing to engage with those companies.
The SDR experiment is an even bigger warning sign
There is another recent development that makes this issue harder to ignore.
SGX launched Singapore Depository Receipts (SDRs) to allow investors here to trade overseas stocks during Asian hours.
On paper, the proposition is compelling.
Investors get access to globally recognised companies without having to trade directly in overseas markets.
Yet the initial response has been muted.
Reuters reported last week that 38 SDR listings had generated less than US$27 million in total trading volume by mid-September, despite including well-known companies such as Grab and Sea. Analysts cited factors including shallow liquidity, limited investor familiarity and alternative investment products.
This is potentially more revealing than the number of SDRs listed.
SGX can bring the products to Singapore. But it cannot manufacture investor demand.
And that may be the central challenge facing Singapore’s equity-market revival.
A stock exchange is ultimately a marketplace
This sounds obvious, but it is easy to lose sight of it.
An exchange does not create value simply by hosting securities.
A functioning market requires buyers and sellers.
It requires analysts to follow companies.
It requires fund managers to allocate capital.
It requires retail investors to understand what they are buying.
And it requires sufficient liquidity for investors to feel comfortable owning securities.
This creates a potentially difficult feedback loop.
Low liquidity → less institutional interest → less research coverage → fewer investors → lower liquidity.
Breaking that cycle is much harder than simply attracting another IPO.
This is also why MAS’s decision to introduce a S$20 million market-making grant covering about 80 small- and mid-cap and newly listed stocks is potentially significant. The objective is to improve liquidity, narrow bid-ask spreads and strengthen price discovery.
In other words, policymakers are not just trying to create more listings.
They are trying to make the market work better after the listing.
There is a paradox in Singapore’s current market revival
The timing is particularly interesting because the STI itself is already performing strongly.
Singapore does not have a simple “nobody wants Singapore stocks” problem.
The major banks have attracted substantial investor attention, and the STI has reached record territory.
That creates a more subtle problem.
Can Singapore broaden investor interest beyond the established winners?
A market dominated by a small group of highly liquid, profitable companies can produce a healthy-looking headline index without necessarily creating a vibrant ecosystem for smaller and newer businesses.
That matters because the companies Singapore wants to attract in the future may not look like DBS, OCBC or UOB today.
They may be smaller.
They may be loss-making.
They may be investing aggressively.
They may operate in industries that investors do not yet fully understand.
And some will fail.
Koh has explicitly argued that Singaporean investors need to be willing to take risks on younger companies and emerging sectors, even though some businesses will remain loss-making for years or fail altogether.
That is arguably the hardest part of his vision.
Investors cannot be forced to love a stock
This is the elephant in the room.
Singapore can provide incentives.
MAS can allocate capital.
SGX can improve market infrastructure.
Market makers can improve liquidity.
Companies can choose Singapore as a listing venue.
But none of these measures can guarantee that investors will want to own a particular stock.
Ultimately, investors will still ask:
- Is the valuation attractive?
- Are earnings growing?
- Is the balance sheet strong?
- Is management credible?
- Is there a compelling growth opportunity?
- Is the dividend sustainable?
- Is there a clear path to shareholder returns?
That is why NTT DC REIT and Emperador are useful examples.
Their experience does not prove that SGX failed.
Instead, it demonstrates that a high-quality corporate story is not enough on its own to create a successful public-market investment story.
And that distinction is critical.
So perhaps listing numbers really are the wrong metric
This brings us back to Koh.
His argument becomes more persuasive if we accept that a stock exchange should be judged by the quality and efficiency of its capital ecosystem, rather than simply its number of listed companies.
But that also raises the bar.
If listing numbers are not the metric, then Singapore needs better metrics.
Investors should be watching:
1. IPO quality
Are genuinely attractive companies choosing Singapore?
2. Post-IPO liquidity
Do those companies develop active secondary markets?
3. Institutional participation
Do global and Singapore-based funds actually build meaningful positions?
4. Capital formation
Can companies repeatedly return to the market to raise capital as they grow?
5. Valuation and research coverage
Do companies receive sufficient investor attention to allow efficient price discovery?
6. The pipeline
Are today’s young companies becoming tomorrow’s major listed companies?
Those measures tell us far more about the health of SGX than simply counting how many companies happen to have a ticker symbol.
The real test for SGX is what happens next
Koh’s comments arrive at an interesting moment.
Singapore is simultaneously trying to attract more capital through MAS’s S$6.5 billion EQDP, improve liquidity through market-making initiatives, attract more listings and broaden access to overseas equities.
The machinery is being assembled.
But the final piece cannot simply be legislated or subsidised.
Investors have to participate.
That is why the success of Singapore’s equity-market revival should ultimately be judged not by how many companies SGX manages to attract, but by whether those companies develop deep, liquid and sustainable investor followings.
NTT DC REIT and Emperador show why that distinction matters.
Both bring credible international corporate stories to Singapore.
But the existence of a compelling corporate story does not automatically translate into a compelling Singapore stock.
And perhaps that is the question Singapore’s capital-market reforms now need to answer:
Can SGX become a place where good companies don’t merely come to list — but where investors actually want to own them?
If Singapore can solve that problem, the number of companies listed on SGX may indeed become a secondary statistic.
If it cannot, adding more names to the exchange may simply produce a longer list without creating a deeper market.