Mak Yuen Teen

Professor Mak Yuen Teen is the founding director of the Centre for Investor Protection.  He is Professor (Practice) of Accounting at the NUS Business School and previously served as  Vice Dean, where he founded Singapore’s the first corporate governance center at NUS. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Iclif Executive Education Centre, part of the Asia School of Business (ASB), Malaysia.

Throughout his career, Professor Mak has held senior roles, including Asia-Pacific Director of Research at a NYSE-listed global consulting firm and Head of Research (Singapore) at a Big 4 accounting firm while on leave from academia.

He has played a pivotal role in shaping Singapore’s corporate governance framework, having served on three of the four committees tasked with developing and revising the code of corporate governance for listed companies. This includes both the first committee in 2000 and the most recent committee under the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which released the 2018 Singapore Code. He is currently serving a second three-year term on MAS’s Corporate Governance Advisory Committee. 

His contributions extend to not-for-profit organizations, where he served as chairman and deputy chairman of two large Singaporean organizations. He currently chairs the nominations committee of a leading Singapore not-for-profit healthcare organization. Additionally, he served for 12 years on the audit advisory committee of two UN funds based in New York.

Professor Mak was a council member of the Singapore Institute of Directors and is now a director of Corporate Monitor Limited, a not-for-profit company focused on investor protection and education. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the Vietnam Independent Directors Association and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Hawkamah Institute of Governance in Dubai.

He is actively involved in training directors and regulators on corporate governance across the region, including ASB in Malaysia, and is a frequent speaker at international conferences. Professor Mak also advises a director program by ISCA and SAC Capital, which is accepted by the Singapore Exchange as an alternative for mandatory training for first-time directors of companies listed in Singapore.

He regularly writes op-ed pieces on corporate governance and is frequently quoted in international and Singaporean media, including The Business Times, BBC News, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Nikkei Asia.

His academic research has been published in international journals such as the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, and Accounting Horizons. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.

Professor Mak edited 11 volumes of Asia-Pacific and global case studies published by CPA Australia between 2012 and 2022, with some editions, translated into Chinese and Vietnamese. In 2024, he launched a new annual series of case studies on corporate governance and ethics, which includes 25 case studies published by the Centre for Investor Protection.  In total, he has written or edited nearly 300 case studies on corporate governance.

He developed the first corporate governance rating for Singapore companies, as well as the first Singapore governance rating for REITs and business trusts. Professor Mak was nominated by MAS as the Singapore expert in the development of the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard.

He has authored numerous reports on corporate governance, including a notable 2007, report commissioned by MAS and the Singapore Exchange, was launched by the Minister of Finance at the OECD Asian Corporate Governance Roundtable in Singapore.

Professor Mak is one of only two individuals in Singapore to have received the Corporate Governance Excellence Award from the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) for his contributions to corporate governance.  The Singapore Institute of Directors has also recognized him as a Corporate Governance Pioneer. Additionally, he received the Corporate Governance Excellence Award from the Minority Shareholders Watchdog Group in Malaysia for his work in the region. 

A vocal advocate for corporate governance, Professor Mak regularly shares insights on current governance issues on LinkedIn and on his personal website, Governance for Stakeholders, which he founded in 2013.

Professor Mak holds first-class honors, master’s and PhD degrees in accounting and finance. He is also a member of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA).