Grab your plastic stool, tap the table for a cup of kopi-peng, and let’s talk about the ultimate corporate plot twist that has everyone at the coffeeshop whispering.

Recently, during a glitzy Singapore Press Club fireside chat, somebody decided to play kaypoh. They looked straight at Tan Su Shan—the high-powered, glass-ceiling-shattering CEO of DBS Bank—and basically asked the million-dollar question:

“Eh Su Shan, you run Southeast Asia’s largest bank already, confirm want to drop your badge, enter politics, and go Parliament to wear white-on-white anot?”

Instead of entertaining fantasies of ruling the country or drafting national policies from a ministry desk, sister literally laughed out loud. Her response? A sharp, lightning-fast: “Aiyo, mai lah, I too old already!” (She’s 57, by the way, which in banking terms means she’s just hitting her prime, but in political career moves, apparently it’s a hard pass).

And honestly? When you look at her bank account and her resume, can you really blame her?

The Rise of a Banking Titan (And Why Her Wallet Looks Like a Small Country’s GDP)

To understand why entering politics would be a comical downgrade for Su Shan, you have to look at how hard she hustled to the top. Before she made history as DBS’s first female CEO (succeeding the legendary Piyush Gupta), she spent over three decades grinding through the global financial trenches.

Armed with a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) degree from Oxford—where she apparently spent half her time setting up women-only clubs to counter male-dominated societies—she started in the backrooms of London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. She did stints at Morgan Stanley and Citibank before joining DBS in 2010 to build their consumer banking and wealth management empire into a juggernaut.

And the payout for running Southeast Asia’s biggest banking beast? Let’s just say she isn’t worried about inflation. According to DBS’s annual reports, sister is pulling in a jaw-dropping S$9.6 million in total compensation (comprising a base salary of around S$975k, a cool S$3.7 million cash bonus, and millions more in deferred shares and perks).

To put that S$9.6 million paycheck into perspective, let’s stack her up against other global heavyweights:

Banking Heavyweight	Total Annual Compensation	What That Can Buy You in Singapore (Approximately)
Tan Su Shan (DBS CEO, Singapore)	S$9.6 million	Roughly 16 median 4-room HDB flats, or about 2.7 million plates of chicken rice.
Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase CEO, US)	~US$36 million (~S$48 million)	You could buy a fleet of private helicopters and still have enough pocket change left to buy out every bubble tea shop in Orchard Road.
Emma Walmsley (GSK CEO, UK)	~£12.7 million (~S$22 million)	Easily fund your retirement, your children’s education, and your cat’s private medical insurance until the next century.

Sure, American bosses like Jamie Dimon are playing in a totally different stratosphere, but Su Shan’s multi-million package is still the fiscal equivalent of a small sovereign wealth fund.

If she ever decided to enter politics and take a minister’s salary, she would have to take a pay cut so massive her accountant would need emergency oxygen. Going from a S$9.6 million banking powerhouse package to a government scale is the financial equivalent of driving a Ferrari straight into a bicycle lane.

Why Else Would She Say No? (The Tuition-Parent Syndrome)

During the chat, Su Shan also dropped some serious truth bombs about why politics in Singapore is a whole different kind of headache.

She pointed out a very local, deeply relatable reality: Singaporeans are basically tuition-centre parents on steroids when it comes to running the country. As she joked, “God forbid Singapore fail at anything, right?” We expect the government to score an absolute 100 on every single subject, every single term, without a single smudge on the paper.

She argued that this intense perfectionism actually makes people too terrified of making mistakes. In her view, real leadership—and real corporate survival—requires you to occasionally kenna fall down, get scolded, and learn from a massive screw-up rather than living in permanent fear of public flogging.

Imagine leaving your air-conditioned Marina Bay office, where your biggest daily stress is global interest rates, just to sit in Parliament and get grilled live on television because the DBS mobile app experienced a 15-minute hiccup on a Tuesday morning.

No thank you, please.

Uncle at the Next Table Concludes

At the end of the day, Su Shan made the smartest business decision of her life: she’s staying right where she is. She’ll keep collecting her multi-million dollar bonuses, ranking high on global business power lists, and leaving the political heavy-lifting to other blur sotongs.

As the uncle beside me at the kopitiam muttered while stirring his condensed milk: “Why want to go Parliament and debate policies until your hair drop? Better stay in corporate, let the younger ones argue, and enjoy your lobang!”

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