Wellington College Education Singapore Group—controlled by Singaporean healthcare-to-sports billionaire Peter Lim—is opening the British school’s Jakarta campus in August 2026 to tap into the growing demand for international schools across Southeast Asia.
Located at the heart of Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD City)—a mixed-use residential, commercial, leisure and office township being developed by the Widjaja family’s Sinar Mas Land near Jakarta—the 13,000-square-meter campus will have an initial intake of 350 students in early education. It plans to expand to a much larger site within BSD City to offer a full K-12 curriculum by 2030.
Besides the Jakarta campus, Wellington College Singapore plans to open two more schools in Malaysia and Singapore in the next few years. This marks the most significant global expansion by Wellington College in its 170-year history, the company said in a statement. It declined to say how much the group is investing to build the three campuses.
“Our vision is to bring the best of Wellington’s heritage to the dynamism of Southeast Asia,” Tan Wee Han, CEO of Wellington College Singapore, said in a statement. “The region is undergoing rapid economic and demographic shifts, and families are looking for schooling that is academically rigorous, globally connected and grounded in strong values. Wellington’s approach is exceptionally well placed to meet that demand.”
Wellington College Singapore said it will open a junior school in Singapore in 2028 and start a flagship full K-12 school with boarding facilities in the southern Malaysian state of Johor by 2030.
Lim—one of the wealthiest in Singapore with an estimated net worth $1.9 billion based on Forbes’ real-time data—is unveiling plans for the development of the Wellington College campuses across Southeast Asia three years since signing an agreement with the British school, which is among the world’s top 10 schools for International Baccalaureate curriculums.
The self-made tycoon has been actively investing in Johor, which is being developed into a special economic zone. Through his Singapore-listed Thomson Medical Group, the tycoon is building an integrated property development that will feature a hospital, a hotel, a residential tower and commercial amenities with a gross development value that’s expected to reach 18 billion ringgit ($4.4 billion).
Lim was a former stockbroker who turned a windfall from the sale of his stake in palm oil giant Wilmar International more than a decade ago into a multibillion-dollar portfolio spanning education, healthcare, real estate, and sports. He also owns Spanish football club Valencia and RSP Architects, Planners and Engineers, which is developing a sprawling waterfront estate in the southeastern Malaysian state of Desaru for the family of Malaysian King Ibrahim Iskandar.
