Mr David Cunningham

President Asia Pacific, Federal Express

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning

1.          I am delighted to join you at this Official Opening of Federal Express’s new Asia Pacific Financial Services Centre, here in Techlink.

2.          FedEx and Singapore have enjoyed a close partnership over many years.  Since the beginning of FedEx’s operations in Singapore two decades ago, your scope of activities in Singapore has grown significantly.   You established your South Pacific regional office in Singapore in 1990, and set up your Asia Pacific IT Data Centre in this same building in the late 90s.  I am glad to see this partnership further strengthened with the opening of this Financial Services Centre today.

3.          We appreciate your firm endorsement of Singapore’s role as a shared services hub, through your decision to site your Asia Pacific Financial Services Centre in Singapore.  We are honoured to host the Centre and thank you for your support and confidence in Singapore.

4.          The expansion of FedEx’s scope of activities in Singapore, to a degree, parallels the shifts in Singapore’s economic landscape and also reflects our growing and changing role in the global economy.

5.          From hosting regional headquarters to IT data centres to shared services centres, Singapore has always sought to identify emerging global business trends and positioned our economy to capture these opportunities.  While our small size  mean that we cannot chase after every single possibility, it on the other hand allows us to be very nimble and swift in carving out for ourselves valuable niches in the global marketplace. 

6.          Like FedEx, many businesses have found Singapore an ideal location to grow their regional, and even global, business functions – starting from headquarters, management functions, and progressing to back-office shared services functions like IT and financial processing.  The pull factors that have attracted them to set up regional HQs in Singapore are also inducing them to establish high value-added shared services centres in Singapore.  These factors include the high quality of our workforce, our openness to global talent, our reliable telecommunications infrastructure, our excellent connectivity to the region, and stable, yet responsive, pro-business economic policies.  This Financial Services Centre is an excellent example of how FedEx will leverage on all these factors in Singapore to ensure the rapid and successful implementation of its mission-critical financial shared services functions for the region.

7.          While we celebrate our achievements in attracting many companies’ regional activities into Singapore and helping them successfully implement complex projects with relative ease, we are also keenly aware that the world never stops changing, and opportunities, as well as competitive threats, continue to emerge.  This is why we constantly anticipate the needs of global businesses and adapt existing policies or develop new ones to meet these needs.  Our aim is to make Singapore the best place for businesses and enterprises.

8.          We recognise the strong trend among multinational corporations to implement shared services, in order to streamline their operations and reduce costs, just as FedEx is doing with the establishment of this Financial Services Centre here in Singapore.  We know that the implementation of the shared services concept will not just stop here, and we are keen to work with you as you embark on other shared services initiatives, to ensure that you will find Singapore the ideal location to replicate the success of this Financial Services Centre to your other shared services efforts.

9.          I extend my heartiest congratulations to the management, staff and partners of Federal Express on the opening of your new Asia Pacific Financial Services Centre.

10.       Thank you.