Michael Tay

When Michael Tay was the Singapore Ambassador to Russia, he initiated the Russia-Singapore Business Forum (RSBF) in 2006, which has been the only international business-to-business platform outside of Russia that brings in great numbers from Russia/CIS to Asia. As the Executive Director of the RSBF, Michael was key to the success of the forum, transforming the RSBF from a purely bilateral forum into a global platform involving businesses from more than 40 countries and focusing on emerging and frontier markets. The RSBF has had 8 forums in Singapore, attracting more than 800 top businessmen and political leaders annually from both Russia/CIS and Asia. The level of participation has been extraordinary, including a string of Deputy Prime Ministers from Russia, Russian/CIS and Asian tycoons, as well as Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore. More than a forum, the RSBF has made a tremendous impact on Singapore, Russia and the region. In Singapore alone, the number of Russian companies has risen from 14 in 2005 to over 400 presently; the Russian population in Singapore has increased from 300 in 2003 to more than 5000 in 2013. It has been become a trend that Russian/CIS businessmen are now using Singapore as a launch pad to investing in the region.

As the Founding Executive Director (2012-13) of the Center for Emerging Markets, a joint initiative between the Skolkovo School of Management in Moscow (the top business school in Russia) and Singapore Management University, he laid the groundwork for a business think tank to provide the intellectual ballast for the RSBF as well as for companies looking at new markets.

In 2009, Ambassador Tay was the 17th Executive Director of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the regional organization based in Singapore. He took office at one of the most challenging moments in APEC’s 20-year history due to the global recession. His main priority was to keep APEC focused on the path of free trade, resisting protectionism while accelerating economic integration of the Asia-Pacific, and improving links with the business community. He brought to the position his unique strengths and experience in mobilizing business linkages, in forging new ways of building diplomatic ties, and in strategic foreign policy thinking.

From 2003 to 2008, Ambassador Tay served as Singapore’s Ambassador to Russia. He changed the nature of Singapore-Russia diplomatic ties when he commissioned – as a private sector initiative – the renowned Russian composer, Vladimir Martynov, to compose a symphony about Singapore. The finished piece, Singapore: A Geopolitical Utopia, is an enduring testament to the collaboration between a small city-state and the biggest country in the world. As the first commission after 20 years in recent Soviet/Russian history, it was a musical milestone that radically shifted the place of Singapore in the Russian psyche. This demonstration of the value of soft power and non-traditional diplomacy has reinforced Ambassador Tay’s belief that the real agents of change in regional and global processes are people and ideas.

From 1999 to 2002, he was the Director-General of ASEAN-Singapore, which placed him at the centre of the ASEAN policy-implementation and budgetary management. During Singapore’s Chairmanship of ASEAN in 1998-1999, he led the taskforce that organized the ASEAN Ministerial Meetings and the Summit. 

Other regional postings include his time at the Singapore Embassies in Tokyo and Seoul. In Seoul, his first overseas posting, he was tasked with establishing the first Singapore Embassy in Korea as the Chargé d’Affaires.

In 2006, Ambassador Tay was awarded the Singapore Public Administration Medal (Silver) and bestowed with the honor of ‘Patron of Art of the Century’ by the International Welfare Fund of Russia.

In 2011, he was the first Singaporean to be awarded the Pushkin Medal by the President of the Russian Federation for his significant contribution to the humanitarian ties between Russia and Singapore.

Moving ahead, Michael Tay is working on several fronts that reflect his entrepreneurial spirit and his commitment to social projects that leverage the softer side of power. As Co-Founder of SingJazz (held twice now, in 2014 and 2015), he has embarked on an initiative to grow the local jazz scene and establish Singapore as Asia’s center for international jazz. To provide a non-profit framework for his long-standing work in the arts, he established the Foundation for the Arts and Social Enterprise that will seek to develop and promote private arts projects to help bring Singapore to the global arts stage as well as provide a platform for emerging Singapore artistes to grow. A key ongoing project will be the establishment of Hermitage Singapore, which will become the first Asian branch of the St Petersburg Hermitage Museum and will have an immense impact on Singapore’s stature as an arts and culture hub in the region and globally.

In a similar vein, he has also launched a new gastrobar concept “IMMIGRANTS” that aims to re-establish the place of Singapore heritage food by reviving a sense of the Singapore culinary identity, based on the belief that the essence of fusion was conceived and nurtured over a hundred years by our immigrant forefathers. 

On the technology front, Michael Tay is in the process of initiating an Innovation Exchange.Asia forum in Singapore focused on the 3 Ps: policy, process and products. The idea is to create an annual marketplace for technology exchange and investments, converging the best start-ups with the brightest entrepreneurs and investors in a setting that is business-friendly and ideal for collaboration in R&D and commercialisation for the Asian market. Innovation is global business, not geographically limited or politically constrained. Hence, the forum will encompass the whole spectrum of innovation from the basic start-ups to big corporates engaged in urbanization solutions to the policy-setters. If successful, the forum will develop an ecosystem that will transform Singapore into a Silicon Valley in Asia.