Singapore Airlines has appointed Henrik Poulsen to its board of directors as an independent non executive director, adding a former Orsted and TDC chief executive to the carrier's board.
The appointment was announced on 19 October 2026 and took effect the same day. Poulsen joins the Board Safety and Risk Committee, although that committee seat begins only in February 2027.
Poulsen was Chief Executive Officer and President of Orsted from 2012 to 2020, the period in which the Danish company completed its transformation from an oil and gas utility into one of the largest offshore wind developers in the world. Before that he was Chief Executive Officer of TDC, the Danish telecommunications group, from 2008 to 2012.
He currently chairs the Supervisory Board of Carlsberg and is Chairman of the Board of Faerch and of Flatpay. He is a director of Bertelsmann and a Senior Adviser to A P Moller Holding. He served as Vice Chairman of Novo Nordisk from 2022 to 2025.
Earlier in his career Poulsen was an Operating Executive at Capstone and at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, held a series of executive roles at LEGO, and worked at McKinsey in Copenhagen and New York. He holds a bachelor of science and a master of science in international business and finance from Aarhus School of Business.
Singapore Airlines announced a second board appointment in the same statement. Lee Theng Kiat joins as a non independent, non executive director and takes seats on the Board Executive Committee and the Board Safety and Risk Committee. The airline stated explicitly that he is not a nominee of its largest shareholder, Temasek Holdings.
Lee is Chairman of Singapore Telecommunications and of Singapore Energy Interconnections, and sits on the boards of Temasek Holdings and Temasek Capital China Holdings. He joined Temasek in 2012 and was President and Chief Executive Officer of Temasek International until he retired from that executive role in 2021. Before Temasek he was concurrently President and Chief Executive Officer of Singapore Technologies Telemedia and of STT Communications, having joined the Singapore Technologies group in 1985 in legal and strategic business development. He spent more than eight years in the Singapore Legal Service before that and holds a law degree from the National University of Singapore.
The airline did not name a predecessor for either man, and the statement presents both as additions to the board rather than replacements.
The pairing is a readable one. Poulsen brings the experience of running a capital heavy business through a complete change of energy base, which is the problem every full service carrier now faces as sustainable aviation fuel moves from pilot volumes to mandated blending. His Carlsberg chairmanship also puts him across consumer brand management at scale, which is closer to the premium airline business than it first appears.
Lee brings a different kind of weight. A Temasek International chief executive who also chairs Singapore's largest telecommunications group understands both the state linked shareholder environment the airline operates in and the capital allocation discipline a long haul fleet renewal demands. That the airline went out of its way to say he is not a Temasek nominee is itself notable, and suggests the board is being deliberate about independence optics at a time when governance scrutiny of state linked carriers has risen.
The delayed start on Poulsen's Safety and Risk Committee seat is the one unexplained detail in the announcement. The airline gave no reason for the gap.
