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 was a former Vice Dean of the School, where he founded the first corporate governance centre in Singapore at NUS. Professor Mak holds first class honours, master and PhD degrees in accounting and finance. He is a member of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA).
He was 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 the university.
Prof Mak has served on three of the four corporate governance committees set up by the Singapore authorities to develop and revise the code of corporate governance for listed companies, including 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 the Corporate Governance Advisory Committee under MAS aimed at continually raising corporate governance standards for listed companies in Singapore.
He has also served as chairman and deputy chairman of two large not-for-profit organisations in Singapore and currently chairs the nominations committee of a large Singapore not-for-profit healthcare organisation. He also served as a member of the audit advisory committee of two UN funds based in NY over a period of 12 years.
Professor Mak was a former council member of the Singapore Institute of Directors. He is a director of a new not-for-profit company set up to enhance investor protection and education in Singapore called Corporate Monitor Limited. He serves as a member of the Advisory Council of the Vietnam Independent Directors Association and as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Hawkamah Institute of Governance in Dubai.
Professor Mak is actively involved in conducting training on corporate governance for directors and regulators in the region, and speaks regularly in international conferences. He is the advisor of a new director programme introduced by ISCA and SAC Capital, which has been accepted the Singapore Exchange as an alternative for fulfilling the mandatory training requirements for first-time directors of companies listed in Singapore.
He has written many op-ed pieces on corporate governance for the media and professional organisations, and has been quoted in the media in Singapore and internationally, including The Business Times, BBC News, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Nikkei Asia and others.
His academic work has been published in international journals such as Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, and Accounting Horizons. He is a member of 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 and a special financial services edition, and several volumes translated into Chinese and Vietnamese have been produced. In all, he has written or edited more than 250 case studies related to corporate governance.
Prof Mak developed the first corporate governance rating for Singapore companies and the first Singapore governance rating for REITs and business trusts. He was nominated by MAS as the Singapore expert in the development of the ASEAN CG Scorecard.
He has also produced numerous reports on corporate governance. In 2007, his report on improving the implementation of corporate governance practices in Singapore, commissioned by MAS and the Singapore Exchange, was launched by the Minister of Finance at the OECD Asian Corporate Governance Roundtable held in Singapore.
Prof Mak is one of only two individuals in Singapore to have been given the Corporate Governance Excellence Award by the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) for his contributions to improving corporate governance in Singapore. The Singapore Institute of Directors has also recognised him as a CG Pioneer. He also received the corporate governance excellence award from the Minority Shareholders Watchdog Group in Malaysia for his contributions to corporate governance in the region.
He is a strong corporate governance advocate and comments regularly on current corporate governance issues on LinkedIn and on his personal website, Governance for Stakeholders, which he started in 2013.