Talk about influence! China, a country with 1.3 billion people, recently said it was considering establishing a company "like Temasek Holdings," the investment arm of the government of Singapore—a country of 4 million. Temasek in the past five years has moved from being a passive custodian to being an active—and outstanding—investor. Shareholder equity has nearly doubled since 2002, to about $90 billion.

When Ho Ching became CEO in 2002, she overhauled Temasek, setting up more precise performance guidelines while raising accountability and transparency. Ho is well connected: her husband is Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore's legendary elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew. But she has taken a strictly professional approach. Rather than prop up zombies, she has not been afraid to let operations fail.

Ho's critics like to focus on Temasek's troubled $3.8 billion purchase of Shin Corp. from former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. But as one of my mentors instructed me, if you do not make mistakes, you are not trying and will never succeed. Both Japan and South Korea have just announced that they too are considering "Temasek-like entities." Expect even more countries to discover that the road to the future runs through Singapore.
Temasek's Chief Executive Ho Ching has been named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

She is among 29 women in the list which includes US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo.

This is the first time Ms Ho Ching has made it to the list of Time's Most Influential.

In the past, she had been named as one of Fortune's and Forbes's most powerful business women in Asia.

TIME said it recognises these 100 people as those "whose power, talent and moral example is transforming the world".

Among this year's highlights - Chinese President Hu Jintao is on the list for the first time and there are more names from Asia than previous years.

This year's honourees come from 27 countries and they fall under four subsections - Leaders & Revolutionaries, Artists & Entertainers, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes & Pioneers.

Also in this year's list are Osama bin Laden, American Idol creator Simon Fuller, Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing and Borat actor Sacha Baron Cohen.

Time's senior editor Zoher Abdoolcarim, based in Hong Kong, said drawing up the list was nothing short of a global exercise.

Editors, correspondents and reporters worldwide were consulted before a team of editors at the magazine's headquarters whittled the list down to the final 100.

"A lot of countries are looking at it (Temasek Holdings) as a way to channel investments of government revenues, as a model to do that," said Time's senior editor Abdoolcarim.

"The second thing is that Temasek Holdings has in the past year acquired a much higher profile. It has been on an acquisitive trail, investing in a lot of new countries that it wasn't looking at before. So I think this elevates Temasek to a new level of operation and strategy, and this stems very much from Ms Ho Ching's leadership."