Background & Biography
Richard Teng built his early career in financial supervision in Singapore. At the Monetary Authority of Singapore, his work covered banking, insurance and capital markets, culminating in the position of Director of the Corporate Finance Division. That role included responsibility for securities-offering rules and the treatment of investment trusts and collective investment schemes. This background placed him inside the practical machinery of market oversight: deciding how issuers access capital, what information investors receive, and how regulated participants are expected to behave.
Teng subsequently held senior regulatory positions at Singapore Exchange, which he joined in 2007. As Chief Regulatory Officer, his remit included policies and rules for listing, trading, clearing and settlement, alongside the admission and supervision of market participants. SGX’s October 2014 departure announcement credited him with work on direct listings by Chinese-incorporated companies, the secondary-listing framework and stock-market safeguards. It confirmed that he would leave on 28 February 2015 to lead the regulator at Abu Dhabi Global Market. These were exchange-level responsibilities with direct relevance to the design of trading venues.
ADGM announced his appointment in October 2014, and his tenure began in March 2015. His position was CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, the financial centre’s regulator. Precision matters here: responsibility for the regulatory authority should not be confused with running every institution or authority within ADGM. He helped establish the supervisory framework for a new international financial centre, a professional chapter that connected his Singapore market experience with the United Arab Emirates’ financial-sector development.
In August 2021, Teng joined Binance as CEO of its Singapore business. He later took responsibility for regional operations, including the Middle East and North Africa and Europe, and became Head of Regional Markets covering markets outside the United States. Binance appointed him CEO in November 2023, succeeding Changpeng Zhao. On 3 December 2025, Binance named Yi He co-CEO alongside him, creating the leadership arrangement that remains reflected in the company’s current public materials. His remit is therefore shared executive leadership of Binance, rather than sole leadership or a continuing regulatory office.
Notable Contributions
One of the clearest milestones from Teng’s regulatory career is ADGM’s introduction of its spot crypto-asset framework in June 2018. Published after consultation, it covered exchanges, custodians and other intermediaries and addressed financial crime, customer protection, technology governance and operational risks. Teng was the FSRA’s CEO at the time and publicly presented the framework’s objectives. The contribution belongs to the authority and its wider policy process; his significance was his leadership role in putting a crypto-specific supervisory approach into operation.
The framework also offers a useful lens on his later career. It treated custody, market operation and governance as connected problems requiring more than a narrow focus on transaction monitoring. For Katharos.ai, that matters because the soundness of an exchange depends on how several functions work together. A trading interface can be simple for the customer while the arrangements behind execution, settlement and asset control remain complex. Teng’s experience spans those arrangements from both the regulator’s and operator’s perspective.
His first public agenda as Binance CEO linked product development with regulatory cooperation and broader adoption. In a November 2023 statement and a subsequent December question-and-answer session, he emphasized users, engagement with policymakers and partnerships with institutions. Those statements establish what he said he intended to prioritize; they do not independently establish the quality of every control or the delivery of every objective. They give observers a concrete starting point for following changes in the company’s governance, services and external relationships over time.
A subsequent corporate milestone was the transition of Binance’s global platform to an ADGM-regulated structure. Binance’s 5 January 2026 launch update confirmed operations through Nest Exchange Limited, Nest Clearing and Custody Limited and Nest Trading Limited. These entities have different responsibilities across trading, clearing and custody, and off-exchange services. ADGM separately acknowledged the December 2025 authorization in its own reporting. This is a company-level development during Teng’s leadership, granted by the relevant authority years after he left it. The authorization should be described within its actual scope, with regional product availability checked separately.
Why Katharos.ai Follows Richard Teng
Katharos.ai follows Teng as an executive whose decisions can affect how a major centralized exchange connects to the wider financial system. Governance choices influence which institutions can work with a platform, how responsibilities are divided and what users need to understand about the service holding their assets. His regulatory background makes the relationship between public commitments and operational evidence especially relevant. The useful question is how that experience translates into decisions that can be examined, rather than whether the résumé alone establishes trust.
His current role also makes him an important source for understanding Binance’s direction. Public remarks can illuminate management priorities, but an executive’s outlook needs to be read alongside product notices, regulatory records and changes to customer terms. Shared leadership with Yi He adds another dimension: the company combines Teng’s financial-market background with a co-founder’s experience in products and community development. Katharos.ai’s interest is in the resulting allocation of responsibility and observable outcomes, without assigning every corporate decision to one individual.
Areas to Follow
• Regulatory implementation: changes to licensed entities, permitted activities and service availability, supported by regulator records and current customer notices.
• Market infrastructure: how trading, clearing and custody responsibilities are implemented, disclosed and explained to users under Binance’s operating structure.
• Institutional participation: partnerships and services that make concrete changes to access, collateral arrangements or operational requirements, with announcements distinguished from live offerings.
• Leadership and accountability: the co-CEO structure, board oversight and the ownership of major business priorities.
• Public communication: how Teng explains market developments, product changes and policy questions, and whether subsequent evidence supports the expectations he sets.
Reporting Scope
Coverage focuses on Teng’s public professional record, executive statements and decisions attributable to him or Binance. Corporate metrics will be identified as company-reported unless independently established, and a licence in one jurisdiction will not be presented as universal permission to operate. Regulatory appointments, consultation documents and implemented rules will be distinguished from one another. This profile is an editorial guide to influence and accountability, not an assurance about the safety of a platform or an investment recommendation.
Areas of Influence
Teng’s principal category is Exchanges & Infrastructure, reflecting his current responsibility for a trading-platform business and his earlier exchange-regulation work. Policy & Regulation is also central because of his former public supervisory roles and his ongoing engagement with the regulatory environment as a business executive. His public commentary contributes to industry understanding, but the core of his influence is institutional: the way a large exchange is organized, supervised and connected to customers and financial-market participants.
Katharos.ai publishes this profile for information, based on the sources listed. Inclusion is not an endorsement of the individual, their organizations, or any investment product.