Singtel CEO gets 17% pay cut amid S'pore & Australia outages, now earns S$6.8 million

Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon received a 16.9 per cent pay cut, following an outage at its Australian unit Optus that resulted in three deaths, and a series of network outages in Singapore.

He took home S$6.8 million for FY2026. His pay for FY2025 had stood at S$8.2 million, according to The Business Times.

What the board said

Singtel said that its board had taken into account both the Optus incident and the Singapore outages, in determining the "appropriate remuneration outcome" for Yuen.

Other key executives at the group also saw their pay drop 11.9 per cent, to S$25.9 million, according to its annual report released on Jun. 30.

The Optus incident saw an outage following a network upgrade in September last year, which knocked out access to Triple Zero, Australia's emergency hotline.

A review found that this led to at least three deaths.

The second incident was closer to home: a string of outages hit Singtel's network in Singapore in March, with the worst one on Mar. 16 leaving users without service for over six hours.

Singtel acknowledged both incidents directly, saying the group remains focused on rebuilding customer trust and improving network reliability.

Strong financial performance

None of this dented Singtel's actual financial performance.

Net profit for the year rose 39.5 per cent to S$5.6 billion, helped along by S$2.84 billion in gains from selling part of its stake in telco Airtel.

Underlying net profit similarly climbed by 12 per cent to S$2.8 billion.

Yuen said that the telco intends to "[evolve] from a largely traditional telco group, into a global player in digital infrastructure and services".

To this end, it will double down on its digital infrastructure and continue adopting and integrating AI across its operations, he said.