Why Keith Magnus
plays the bass

In the photograph, Keith Magnus is wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket and a smile that would be difficult to fit into a corporate biography. A cream-coloured bass hangs across his body. Around him, the staff band Oneders is performing at a company event in 2023. For once, the investment banker has an instrument that makes his contribution audible.

Magnus likes the bass. He has explained the preference in terms familiar to anyone who has played in a band: the instrument gives the other musicians something dependable to work with. His version of leadership involves setting a rhythm that allows colleagues to do their jobs. There are worse ways to explain a chairman’s responsibilities. Most require considerably more slides.

His working life now has several audiences. He chairs Evercore’s Asia business and sits on its Global Management Committee. He also chairs The Kallang Group and the Families for Life Council, and serves as deputy chairman of Sport Singapore. The banking and public appointments overlap in an unusually literal way: he helped negotiate the government’s takeover of the sporting precinct he would then help oversee.

The fare his father chose to pay

Long before these responsibilities, there was a smaller transaction in Chinatown. Magnus and his father would seek out an older trishaw rider who attracted fewer customers than the younger riders. The family had access to a car. Getting somewhere efficiently was scarcely the point of the outing.

His father, Richard Magnus, paid more than the usual fare. On special occasions, they brought gifts. The boy saw an adult use his spending power to notice someone whom other customers passed over. It was a lesson delivered without a lecture, which may help explain why it survived.

Richard was a judge. His son remembers dignity and empathy in ordinary encounters as well as the formal authority of his profession. At the Singapore Cricket Club, his father would order a cold drink and a meal for the car park attendant before they ate. The gesture placed another person’s working day inside the family’s lunch.

These memories matter to the later career because they give its language some weight. Trust and service are words that travel comfortably through banking presentations. Magnus has a much more particular image to return to: a customer choosing the rider who needed the custom.

He wanted to help make the deal

He studied laws and economics at Monash University in Melbourne. During National Service, he worked in the Ministry of Defence’s legal department on procurement contracts. The work put him close to transactions, documenting agreements that had already been reached.

He became interested in the decisions that came earlier: why a deal should happen, what value it might create, and how the parties could get there. Banking offered a way to work on those questions. His education supplied two useful languages for the job, the economics of an agreement and the law that would give it shape.

He entered Chase’s Asia analyst development programme in 1998. Rotations exposed him to multinational banking, credit and cash management. Investment banking eventually held his attention. The start came during the Asian financial crisis, hardly a moment when the profession could plausibly promise a quiet life.

He later led investment banking businesses at Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS. His Merrill Lynch and UBS responsibilities covered Singapore and Malaysia. Those posts supplied experience of large institutions and the expectations that accompany their names. Opening a new office would ask something different of him.

A mobile phone before an office

Evercore appointed Magnus in late 2013 to establish its Singapore operation. He recalled the beginning with a compact inventory: “It was just me and my mobile phone.” Staffing, licensing and even the office design were decisions he had to make.

The dates are useful here. Establishment came in 2013. The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Capital Markets Services licence followed in mid-2014. The official launch took place in March 2015. A new business can have several beginnings, each involving less ceremony than the one people eventually photograph.

Magnus became chairman of Evercore’s Asia business in March 2017 and joined its Global Management Committee in October 2019. The practice acquired an award record as well: six recognitions as Singapore’s Best M&A Adviser through The Asset’s 2022 awards, alongside the publication’s Asia award for 2021.

Evercore’s biography credits him with originating and advising on more than 60 completed deals at the firm, worth over S$270 billion. That figure describes the value of transactions. It gives a sense of the decisions entrusted to the practice, whose work includes advising companies on changes that can remake their ownership and direction.

The numbers sit beside a less numerical account of how he works. In an earlier interview, Magnus described curiosity, persistence and integrity as requirements of the profession. An adviser’s usefulness depends partly on whether a client trusts the judgment behind the recommendation. A celebrated transaction can announce that trust; the relationship has to exist before it.

The assignment that stayed open

In 2020, Magnus joined the Sport Singapore board. Two years later, he served as its chief negotiator with Sports Hub Pte Ltd during the review and takeover of the Singapore Sports Hub. The government wanted stronger sporting, social and economic outcomes from the precinct, with wider access alongside commercial sustainability.

In November 2022, SportSG announced that Magnus would chair the new managing entity and Quek Swee Kuan would be its chief executive. Their appointments took effect on 1 December, ahead of the handover. Nearly 90 per cent of the previous operator’s staff and more than 95 per cent of its partners and vendors were expected to move across.

Those transition figures describe an essential part of the job. A change in ownership still needs people who know how the place runs. Under a new board, visitors would continue arriving, events would continue happening, and practical responsibilities would continue demanding answers.

For a banker, this was an unusually visible continuation of a transaction. The terms could be settled, but the purpose of the agreement would be tested by what happened in the precinct afterwards.

A different kind of tour preparation

In early 2023, a Singapore team went to Los Angeles to meet figures in sport and entertainment. Taylor Swift’s international tour dates had yet to be confirmed. Kallang Alive Sport Management, chaired by Magnus, initiated discussions about bringing her tour to Singapore, working with concert promoter AEG.

The eventual result was six National Stadium shows in March 2024, Singapore’s exclusive South-east Asian engagement on the Eras Tour. It was a negotiation involving an artist’s touring plans, a destination’s appeal and the practical ability to receive fans travelling from across the region.

There was preparation at home, too. His daughter Nicole helped him learn Swift’s music and understand what it meant to listeners. An investment banking career had equipped him for complex discussions. His daughter could supply something the career had omitted. A household can contain expertise that never appears on the family’s more formal résumés.

The story has a smaller sequel. A teenager, identified in public reporting as Lim, gave up his own concert ticket and his aunt’s so that two girls who had been scammed could attend. He arranged for the tickets to go at their original price, despite the demand for them.

Magnus called him and offered tickets for another night. The teenager had not expected to attend after helping the girls. The response made room for him again. Among the economic arguments surrounding the concerts, this was a straightforward exchange: someone had acted generously, and the venue’s chairman chose to recognise it.

“We are in the business of creating memories, not managing crowds.”

Keith Magnus

What happens between the big nights

The precinct is now called The Kallang. At the brand launch, its operator reported more than 4,000 event days and more than nine million visitors over the preceding three years. The programme included international performances and sporting competitions alongside National School Games and community gatherings.

The range is central to the assignment. A national sporting precinct has to accommodate different reasons for turning up. A concert audience and a school team use the same place differently. Their visits also leave different memories. Making room for both requires choices about the calendar and access, as well as the buildings.

Magnus’s family work has followed a related course. He spent seven years on the Centre for Fathering board, including four as chairman. Derek Lau succeeded him in October 2025, as Magnus moved towards the chairmanship of the Families for Life Council.

That council brings together volunteers from the private and people sectors to encourage stronger family relationships. Its work includes events, conversations and opportunities to spend time together. In that setting, the value of a gathering is measured in the relationships people carry home.

Still in the band

The appointments continue to accumulate. On 1 August 2026, Magnus began a two-year term on the Singapore Land Authority board. In September, he appeared on The Front Row Podcast, discussing his banking career, The Kallang, leadership and the future of live events.

His current ambition for the precinct involves creating an international destination and developing the local capabilities needed to deliver its programme. That includes the people whose work makes an event possible long before the audience takes its seats.

The bass photograph is a useful place to finish. It shows a chairman participating in something that requires other people, listening and keeping time. The childhood trishaw rides, the office he established and the public precinct he now chairs occupy very different parts of his life. Each brings him back to a practical question about who is being served.

In the band, he has chosen an instrument that gives the answer a rhythm.