SINGAPORE - With his job as director at talent agency company, Beam Artistes, popular TV personality Utt is just the latest to hop over to the business side of the entertainment industry. Here are other famous faces who decided they would rather be taking care of business.

IRENE ANG, At the height of Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd’s popularity, the actress, who played the bimbo tai tai Rosie, had not-so-bimbotic career woman plans: She founded her own agency, Fly Entertainment, in 1999, which since become one of the most successful talent agencies in Singapore.

ADRIAN PANG. In 2010, Pang left a very successful MediaCorp TV Channel 8 career – successful for someone who claimed he could barely speak Mandarin – to become Artistic Director of his own theatre company, Pangdemonium!, along with his wife, Tracie.

MICHELLE CHONG. She founded Huat Films in 2011 in order to make her first movie, Already Famous. When she officially bowed out of the TV scene in 2012, she also started Left Profile, her artiste management agency that manages not just herself but Lee Teng, Pornsak and others.

LAURETTA ALABONS. The host of the ’90s MediaCorp TV Channel 5 variety shows Rollin’ Good Times and Showbuzz went on to found the concert promotion company, LAMC Productions, which has brought big names such as Justin Bieber, Metallica and Lady Gaga to Singapore.

THE COLLECTIVE ASIA. Comprising international artistes like Jason Godfrey, Oli Pettigrew and Linda Black, The Collective Asia’s “members” manage themselves. Their website proclaims them “independent individuals” who “have united under a common banner to stand for quality of work, as well as independence from the system”.

NICK SHEN. The Star Search 1999 winner, who was a local heartthrob in the early 2000s, left television to start an events management company called Tok Tok Chiang, which, yes, specialises in promoting Chinese opera.