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Pan-Electric Industries

Singapore marine salvage company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 2, 2024
Entity authorityQ7129496 ↗
Source-derived summary

Pan-Electric Industries was a Singapore-based company that specialised in marine salvage work, and had 71 subsidiary companies, including hotel and property interests, with a market capitalization of S$230 million. The company collapsed in December 1985 due to massive unsettled forward contracts, forcing the Stock Exchange of Singapore (SES) and Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) to shut down for three days. At its demise, the company had a total debt of S$480 million, and all its shares held by 5,500 shareholders were found to be worthless overnight. As of 2000, it remains the largest corporate collapse in Singapore's history, and the only instance where the SES had to be unexpectedly closed.

In the aftermath of the collapse, key people in the company such as Peter Tham, Tan Kok Liang, and Tan Koon Swan were prosecuted and given varying jail sentences. The collapse of the company shook public confidence in the SES, causing prices of stocks to plunge and resulted in the bankruptcy of some stockbroking firms. New securities laws were introduced in March 1986 to ensure that stockbroking firms could protect themselves against credit risks.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Pan-Electric Industries” as singapore marine salvage company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pan-Electric, Industries and Singapore.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1985, 2000, 1986—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Pan-Electric, Industries and Singapore providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Pan-Electric Industries”, the useful work is to connect “singapore marine salvage company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 2, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7129496. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 2000 and 1986.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Pan-Electric Industries”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Pan-Electric Industries primary sources, Pan-Electric Industries archive and Pan-Electric research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pan-Electric Industries”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Pan-Electric Industries” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.