WELCOME
- Good afternoon, Members of the Media, Ladies & Gentlemen
Thank you for coming to the IPO launch of AsiaOne.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
- It is my great pleasure and honour to address you in my capacity as Chairman of AsiaOne. For this I thank SPH and AsiaOne and also my fellow Directors for agreeing to be part of the team.
- Together with my fellow directors and colleagues at AsiaOne, we are all ready to take on the challenge of making AsiaOne a premier Asian gateway portal. While the task ahead is a challenging one, I am comforted by the fact that I am supported by a very experienced and competent team at both the Board and Management levels. At the Board level we have 5 independent Directors. They are:-
i) Mr. Koh Boon Hwee, Executive Chairman, Wuthelam Holdings and also Chairman of Singapore Telecommunications and Singapore Post;
ii) Mr. Teo Ming Kian, Executive Chairman of NSTB, Chairman of Singapore Technologies and Deputy Chairman of EDB;
iii) Prof. Eddie Kuo Chen-Yu, Founding Dean of the School of Communication Studies, Nanyang Technological University;
iv) Mr. Soon Tit Koon, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of Wilmar Holdings Pte. Ltd., and
v) Myself.
- Because of travelling and other commitments, some of them are unable to be with us here today.
- The other 3 members of the Board are non-independent Directors. They are:-
a) Mr. Tjong Yik Min, Group President and Executive Director of SPH.
b) Mr. Low Huan Ping, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of AsiaOne.
c) Mr. Tan Teck Huat, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of AsiaOne.
- As you can see my fellow Directors are all very established in their respective fields and have a wealth of experience covering management, banking & finance, telecommunications, information technology, mass communications and media - all critical and relevent to the business of AsiaOne.
OUR OBJECTIVE
- Let me now focus briefly on our objective and the challenges ahead for us. We have positioned ourselves to be a premier Internet player in Asia, targeting the English speaking audience with our English language portal, AsiaOne.com, and the Chinese language market with our Chinese language portal, Zaobao.com.
- Our objective is to be a dynamic, multifaceted news, information, lifestyle and e-commerce site. We want to reach English and Chinese speaking Internet users globally with our focus on Asian products and services, and businesses and consumers looking for total solutions in Asia.
THE CHALLENGE OF INTERNET & THE NEW ECONOMY
- The challenge of the New Economy driven by the Internet is upon us whether we like it or not. The Internet is a significant global communications medium, enabling millions of people to share information and conduct business electronically, and providing advertisers, merchants and other service providers with an attractive means of marketing and selling their products and services. It is an irreversible development and the only trend it now has is growth and more growth.
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- The recent economic downturn in the Asia-Pacific region had not slowed down the rate of Internet penetration in the Asia-Pacific markets. On the contrary, the recent volatility in the Asia-Pacific financial markets has increased the demand for reliable, round-the-clock news and information on local, regional and global events, which is readily available through the Internet. Consumers and corporate customers have also discovered that
Internet applications, such as e-mail and website advertising, represent lower cost substitutes for comparable non-Internet products and services.
- To give you some growth statistics, International Data Corporation (IDC), in its biannual update (of Internet user forecasts and revenue generated online for 13 Asia-Pacific countries in 1999), estimated that the compounded annual growth rate of Internet users from Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) for 1997-2003 would be 56%. IDC forecasts a boom in Asia-Pacific's user population with an increase in the number of Internet users reaching approximately 95.2 million by end 2004, which is expected to generate e-commerce revenue of approximately US$ 87.5 billion.
- More and more companies are rushing in to seize the opportunities that come with this new wave. As in any great gold rush, many start-ups will perish. We believe AsiaOne has what it takes not only to survive the "Dot.com gold rush" and the accompanying shakeout but it will emerge even stronger as a premier Asian gateway portal.
ABOUT ASIAONE
- How ready is AsiaOne you may ask. AsiaOne is not a new arrival on the Internet scene. Having been in operation in 1995 as a multimedia division of SPH, we have established ourselves as one of the most popular portals in Singapore. We also believe that the online edition of Lianhe Zaobao, which provides news content for Zaobao.com, has a very good reputation for its timely and quality reporting of news and current affairs among Chinese-speaking users globally. Zaobao.com is currently ranked by www.cwrank.com as one of the top Chinese news websites in the world.
- We are not resting on our laurels with this rating. We aim to further enrich the total customer experience by providing rich business - and lifestyle - contents which are engaging and exciting to the regional Internet users. We plan to expand horizontally, vertically and geographically. To this end, we intend to invest extensively in technology to build comprehensive websites which support mass transactions and are also rich functionally. These will provide portal services which users will find easy to use and will want to continue using.
- AsiaOne has formed alliances with strategic Internet and technology companies that possess complementary expertise and know-how. These include M1, The Fantastic Corporation, IBM, Asianbourses.com, and Health Answers (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. Such alliances enable us to provide high quality services to our users.
CONCLUSION
- These are exciting times for all of us at SPH AsiaOne. My fellow Board Members, and the Management & staff of AsiaOne are looking forward to the challenges and the task ahead to make AsiaOne a premier Asian portal.
- I would like to conclude by thanking all our customers, including our advertisers and merchants, content and business partners, business associates, and users of AsiaOne for their continued support.
THANK YOU
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