Shaw Organisation

History

Shaw organisation has had a long history in Singapore since its founding in 1924. They bought the land which the Shaw House now stands in the year 1952. The plot of land was originally granted to William Scott in 1845. About 500,000 square feet of land was levelled original Shaw House and the adjacent Lido Theatre.

The company managed single-screen cinemas until the late 1980s, when it decided to build cineplexes to give more flexibility in offering different types of films. The first cineplexes built were the Prince and Jade cineplexes in Shaw Towers, opened in February 1988. Cineplexes have now become the standard for movie theatres offering varied shows for smaller crowds.

The Beginning

The Shaw Organisation was founded in 1924 when Tan Sri Runme Shaw (1901-1985) arrived in Singapore from Shanghai. He was the third of seven children of a Shanghai textile merchant, Shaw Yuh Hsuen (1867-1920).

In Shanghai, Runme's eldest brother Runje Shaw had founded the Tianyi Film Company (aka Unique). Not satisfied with the domestic market, the Shaw brothers sought business opportunities elsewhere, especially South-East Asia. Runme, as distribution manager was tasked to search for a suitable investment city. Runme's original destination was Indochina where he hoped to meet with the film distributors. However, he was denied permission to land there and instead, he ended up in Singapore, creating the Shaw Organisation. He was joined by his younger brother Sir Run Run Shaw two years later.

Amusement parks

After the Great Depression, the Shaws decided to diversify their risk by branching out from their entertainment business into areas like amusement parks. They brought in ideas from abroad and modelled the parks after those in Shanghai, which proved to be popular amongst the local population.

From the mid 30s to the 80s, Shaw operated two popular fairgrounds - the Great World Amusement Park and the New World Amusement Park.

Shaw Brothers

At its height, the company owned multiple movie theatres and amusement parks throughout Singapore, Malaysia and Borneo, and spawned Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong to feed its then-burgeoning operation.

Recent years

By August 2000, a computerised ticketing system developed jointly with Singapore Technologies was launched. This system linked all Shaw theatres into a single network for automated telephone credit card purchases. With her extensive infrastructure, Shaw is now the biggest distributor of Asian cinema. Today, it manages and runs 55 screens in 8 locations in Singapore.

Cinemas

Shaw Theatres has 8 cinemas in Singapore currently. Century Square is privately owned.

Planned locations

To be announced

Commercial properties

Besides its involvement in film distribution, Shaw Organisation had investments in properties as well. The most prominent one is the Shaw House located at 350 Orchard Road with Isetan as its anchor tenant. The Shaw House is actually the organisation’s largest project to date in Singapore. It took three years to construct and was finally completed in 1993.

Other than the Shaw House, the Shaw Organisation also owns other commercial properties including the Shaw Plaza, Shaw Centre, Shaw Corner, Oriental Plaza, Balestier Warehouse, North Bridge Road Shophouse and Mackenzie Road Shophouse.

Residential projects

Shaw Organisation also owns residential properties in Singapore. The two notable ones are Twin Heights and Hullet Rise. The others are single houses (With the exception of Jalan Sampurna which is a plot of land with two houses).

Subsidiaries

Shaw Organisation Pte Ltd owns the Shaw Properties Pte Ltd and Shaw Theatres Pte Ltd.

As the name suggests, Shaw Properties Pte Ltd oversees the operations in property development, acquisition and leasing whilst Shaw Theatres Pte Ltd oversees the operations in film purchase, distribution and the cinema’s food and beverages.

Shaw Foundation

The Shaw Foundation was set up in 1957 by the Shaw brothers and is currently one of the largest philanthropic organisations in the world. Most of the money comes from its revenue from the properties under Shaw Properties Pte Ltd. All earnings from the Shaw Centre since the late 70’s have been given to charitable organisations.

The largest amount that the Shaw Foundation has ever set aside was a whopping SGD 17.7 million in the year 1999. The largest share of the funding went to the National Kidney Foundation and most of its recipients were in the healthcare sector.

In the educational sector, the Shaw Foundation has been a regular donor to the National University of Singapore (NUS) since 1987, awarding around 240 scholarships to date.

Dr Shaw Vee Meng is currently the chairman of the Shaw Foundation. He is also the eldest son of Run Run Shaw.

Controversy

National Kidney Foundation Saga

The major recipient of Shaw Foundation's donations, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) of Singapore was caught in a scandal mainly involving the misuse of donation funds of NKF. The incident circled around then Chief Executive Officer, T.T Durai understating NKF's reserves and over-exaggerating the number of patients to encourage more donations, using the funds for personal reasons such as maintaining his personal car (a Mercedes-Benz 200), travelling frequently on first class flights and an installation of a 'golden tap' in his private office suite. Durai dropped NKF's claims against the Singapore Press Holdings on 13 July 2005 after making several confessions during the trial and the entire board of NKF resigned on the 14 July 2005.

Since the incident, there has been a said irreversible effect on trust issues for donations to charitable organisations in Singapore, including Shaw Foundation. For NKF itself, donations plummeted from $73 million in 2004 to $21 million in 2013 - signifying the lasting impact of the incident.