This is the testimony of Jabez, who was my work colleague. When I first met him, he was having a hard time trying to make ends meet. Before that he had suffered a business failure. In order to provide for the basics for the children, he and the wife often had to skip lunch, or go without new clothes or shoes. The car he was driving was an early model Ford Cortina, which frequently needed maintenance and repairs. Sometimes he would go to prayer meetings on an empty stomach (to some extent fasting and secondly to cut costs). He himself said when he prayed in the church, he avoided having to kneel because he was ashamed to have people see his shoe soles, which had many holes! His prayer was simply for God to bless him with a new pair of shoes. By the way he was wearing his only pair of shoes, his wedding shoes, at that time worn on for 5 years.
After going to our congregation for some time Jabez got better acquainted with our pastor. Then one day he related to the pastor how difficult his livelihood had been. So we got together to pray. In the midst of the prayer, I remembered pastor said he saw a vision of a ladder and that Jabez was climbing it. There were certain parts of the ladder that were missing and the interpretation was that Jabez had to find out what part it was. The answer was not long in coming.
A few weeks later the Sacred Heart Cathedral was host to a charismatic revival gathering and delegates from around the world were attending. Then in the midst of the meetings' activities, Jabez was to himself meet up with a man from Pakistan who had the answer to the missing steps ladder vision. In Jabez's narration ..
"One of my best friends John Peyer brought me with his car to the convention. After the meeting, there was an arrangement by John Peyer for supper with a few delegates, altogether 7 of us. Therefore, we split into 2 groups. The Pakistani, by the name of Anwar (Youth leader of a charismatic group in Pakistan}, rode with us(John and myself) in one car. Before this meeting with the Pakistani, and while John Peyer was speaking of arranging the venue, I was standing 30 feet away from them waiting for John. While I was looking toward John's direction, this man's piercing looks moved me. I have never seen or met him before. Moreover I had not expected that he will be invited for the supper. He was a stranger altogether. So we were supposed to meet at one place which is in a coffee shop in Taman Fortuna but John needed to go to the ATM to get some cash. When we arrived the other group was still nowhere to be seen. So the three of us drank and chit chatted by ourselves. At the coffee shop Anwar told me several times that God had a message for me. I ignored him. Instead I asked him about Christianity in Pakistan. It was past 12.30 midnight, which is beyond the time we promised the house owner Simom Ray to go back. So we drop Anwar at the gate of the house. As we were about to go off Simom ran out to invite us in. There we had our supper with a variety of foods prepared. I sat in the three sitter sofa and Anwar came to sit next to me and said again, "God has A Message for you." And this time I asked What was the message."
According to Jabez himself, when he first saw the Pakistani he did not expect to receive anything from him. Afterall they were strangers and he was from an Islamic state, he thought. On the other hand Anwar sensed immediately that there was a word which he felt God wanted him to release to bless Jabez. When they were finally able to be together, he shared the word from the bible and the 7 steps of prayer. Jabez found out that the missing steps were "you have to die to your own desires-to self-and walk behind Jesus".
Now this incident had taken place about 5 years ago. Since then I have seen Jabez prospered in his business. Previously when he could hardly afford anything at all, apart from the basics such as rent, food, school uniforms etc., the family is now able to go on family vacations, travel to other cities, buy plenty of toys, a new car, a truck for his business, and time to indulge in sports and recreation. In addition he organized bicycle races, learn to use the computer and internet, join social clubs etc. In his words, Jabez said God blessed his life. He gives praise to Jesus Christ
By Calvin 1997
LOVE: The special Feeling that makes you feel all warm and wonderful.
RESPECT: Treating others as well as you would like to be treated.
APPRECIATION: To be grateful for all the good things life has to offer.
HAPPINESS: The full enjoyment of each moment. A smiling face.
FORGIVENESS: The ability to let things be without anger.
SHARING: The joy of giving without thought of receiving.
HONESTY: The quality of always telling the truth.
INTEGRITY: The purity of doing what's right, no matter what.
COMPASSION: The essence of feeling another's pain, while easing their hurt.
PEACE: The reward for living the 10 most important things.
It's the last week of a stay at his Beverly Hills vacation manse before billionaire Peter Sondakh returns home to Jakarta. Rather than loll by a pool or play golf, he pays a George Washington University psychology professor a hefty sum to come into his gated home and assess his strengths and weaknesses. After ten hours and countless cigarettes, Sondakh has laid bare his background, values and experiences. The professor then interviews Sondakh's petite and elegant wife, Eve.
Later he will send detailed questionnaires to 20 of Sondakh's 29,000 employees, and within six months Sondakh will have the results of his assessment.
"I did this because I want to improve myself," says Sondakh, 57. "I want to know what's wrong with me. Unless you know your weaknesses, how can you improve?"
In this exclusive neighborhood in Beverly Hills known for housing the most powerful celebrities and executives, including Denzel Washington and Rod Stewart, Sondakh is perhaps one of the least recognized faces. Yet his $1 billion fortune probably makes him the richest.
Sondakh's Rajawali Group owns a stake in two publicly traded companies, including 25% of Indonesia's largest cementmaker, Semen Gresik, and 56% of the international cigarette producer and distributor PT Bentoel International. The sprawling conglomerate also owns eight high-end hotels and resorts and manages Indonesia's second-largest taxi operator, whose business model was made into a case study for developing countries by the United Nations. Among its key innovations, Rajawali's Express Taxi is credited with creating an ownership scheme where poor taxi drivers have access to credit so they can eventually own their taxis.
Sondakh's quest for learning from weaknesses has helped him not only survive the current economic crisis but also build his fortune. "The first rule in life is to know what you do not know; never assume," says Sondakh. "Get professional help. If you don't know, ask."
Sondakh considers himself a spiritual man, saying that "divine intervention" plays a significant role in his accomplishments. He reads the Bible each morning at his office before focusing on the three computer screens that face him. Inside his office he is surrounded by paintings, busts and statues of eagles. (Rajawali, the name his father originally gave his company, is the Indonesian word for eagle.) Most are gifts he received from foreign visitors. One sharp-edged eagle by his desk is made entirely out of discarded Coca-Cola cans that kids collected from the street. Sondakh paid $200 for the kids' art, part of a charity project.
Sondakh's father started a business producing coconut oil and exporting timber in 1954. When Sondakh dropped out of dentistry school in 1971 to join his father's business, it was against his dad's wishes. His father grudgingly put him to work collecting timber in his fields. Eventually, with his father's money and some of his own savings, Sondakh started building low-income housing for the poor. The venture flopped, but it served as Sondakh's introduction to property management and taught him the importance of knowing his target market.
In 1975 his father died of a heart attack at age 64. Only 22, it was up to Sondakh to take care of his mother and four sisters. Sondakh immediately took over the company, inheriting 20 employees, whom he called "uncle" because of the age differences.
Sondakh's father, who had always dreamed of opening a hotel, had been in the process of building one with several partners in Surabaya, where Rajawali was headquartered. So Sondakh and his father's well-connected friends partnered with Hyatt to build the hotel, which was completed in 1977.
From that point on Sondakh focused on managing the hotel and making new property deals, for the most part in Singapore. But in 1982, when Singapore experienced a property crash, he lost much of his money. To avoid bankruptcy, he sold his share of the hotel to Hyatt. "That's when I realized I can't rely on property," said Sondakh. "That's when I learned about diversification."
So in 1984 Sondakh started the Rajawali Group, expanding his father's old business. He developed a tourism company and started a joint venture with an opportune partner: Bambang Trihatmodjo, the second son of Indonesia's notoriously brutal and corrupt dictator, President Suharto. "They called me because they needed a partner who knows about property," says Sondakh. "People associate me with the family, but they're wrong. We did a joint venture--so what am I, part of their clan?"
Regardless of the extent of his relationship to the family, the partnership had its advantages. In 1986 the duo, with other partners, opened the Grand Hyatt in Jakarta. Three years later, with Suharto's permission, they partnered again to build Indonesia's first privately owned television network, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI). The partnership ended in 2002, however, when a dispute among the partners made Sondakh decide to sell his stake in the network.
All the while Sondakh kept building up other branches of his business. In 1989 he founded Bank Pos in a separate partnership. Two years later he gained international recognition when the government asked Rajawali to take over the cigarette manufacturer PT Bentoel Group. Originally founded by a Chinese immigrant in the 1930s as a family enterprise, Bentoel had just shocked investors by revealing $700 million in debts divided among Indonesian and foreign bankers and a negative net worth of $350 million.
The Rajawali Group stepped in, attempting to restore foreigners' confidence in the Indonesian market. Sondakh replaced senior management, hired 65 accountants and retired Philip Morris employees and consulted with kpmg Australia. By 1999 the company was posting modest profits, and a year later it became a publicly listed company. Today Bentoel boasts a market capitalization of $280 million.
The ride wasn't easy, though, especially when the Asian financial crisis battered Indonesia's economy in 1997. Rajawali, weighed down by debt, took a significant blow, along with some of Indonesia's largest conglomerates. With over $105 million in debt, Sondakh was forced to unload 30% of his businesses and assets, including Bank Pos, which eventually merged with Bank Danamon Indonesia.
Rajawali overpaid its equity, says Sondakh, so the government later returned less than 1% of Bank Danamon as compensation. Sondakh keeps this in mind as the lesson of the Asian financial crisis: Always have cash reserves.
One of the businesses that Sondakh chose to save during the crisis was his budding telecom, PT Excelcomindo Pratama (XL), which he'd bought in 1993. In the mid-1990s, Rajawali invested heavily in XL's infrastructure and billing system, making customers pay up front rather than billing them. XL eventually became a pioneer in the realm of prepaid cellular phone cards and became a publicly traded company in 2002.
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In 2005 XL's shares hit a historical high of $0.27. As competition in the industry intensified, Sondakh felt that he would need to invest heavily in technology and infrastructure to stay competitive. Instead Sondakh decided it was time to say good-bye. That's when he sold an initial chunk of his stake for $314 million. "Never get emotional with business; if you think you've maximized your profit, it's time to get out," says Sondakh. "The most difficult thing in life is selling--the easiest thing is buying.
Two years later, in what turned out to be remarkable timing, Sondakh sold his remaining 16% stake in XL to United Arab Emirates mobile operator Etisalat, pocketing an additional profit of $438 million. Since the deal took place, the telecom's stock took a 49% plunge (not including the declining Rupiah), closing at $0.09 on Feb. 13.
The cash came at an opportune time. The cementmaker Semen Gresik, which the Rajawali Group bought from Cemex for $337 million in 2006, is today worth $450 million, the bulk of Sondakh's fortune. But with commodity prices and home-building supplies in free fall, the stock has plunged 40% since reaching an alltime high in November 2007. Sondakh says he doesn't worry when it comes to building supplies or commodities, that the prices for them will eventually rebound.
Today he is sitting on a pile of cash reserves of more than $400 million, with the ability to buy up some of the bargain-priced assets. He is wary of "bottom fishing," but this is not to say he hasn't been fishing. He sees a bright future in Indonesia's natural resources industries. The group is building palm oil plantations in South and East Kalimantan. He is bound by a nondisclosure agreement but says Rajawali will probably make a tender offer for a foreign mining company sometime in 2009.
Sondakh is also a believer in Indonesia's tourism industry, which last year generated $7.5 billion and has been growing in the double digits in the past few years, according to Indonesia's Ministry of Culture & Tourism. The Rajawali Group has been expanding its reach in high-end hotels, such as the elite Starwood resort in Bali that just opened in September and charges between $800 and $900 a night.
What about the psychological dissection he submitted himself to? The results of the analysis have yet to come back, but the psychology professor has suggested that Sondakh write a book about his experiences.
Rather than becoming an author, Sondakh prefers to live among the famous faces in anonymity. "What I'm most of afraid of in life is pride," he says. "The key is to keep yourself humble and to continue to improve yourself."
Every year since CommonWealth Magazine launched its Most Admired Company Survey in 1994, Wang ranked high among Taiwan's Top Ten Most Admired Entrepreneurs, enjoying high esteem among industry peers and experts across the board, in the service, financial and manufacturing sectors alike. "No matter whether you were poor as a church mouse or came from a wealthy family, no matter whether you had a grade school education or held a PhD, everyone could learn something from him," notes Wang Chung-ping, head of human resources at BES Engineering Corporation, in explaining why people were fascinated by the Formosa Plastics Group founder.
Mastering His Own Destiny, Never Blaming Others
Wang was born in 1917 into a poor farmer's family in the Jhitan area of Sindian, in Taipei County. It took him three hours every day to walk to school and back home. Before leaving for school in the morning, he was required to fetch enough water for his family to use for the day. After returning home he had to help feed the pigs. Hit by poverty and disease, Wang's father even once considered hanging himself out of desperation.
At the age of 15, Wang left his hometown and went to Jiayi in the south to work in a rice store. The following year he opened his own small rice store with NT$200 that his father had raised from friends and neighbors. While the Japanese-owned rice store next door closed at 6 p.m., Wang kept his store open until 10:30. While his Japanese neighbors indulged in hot baths, Wang, covered in rice chaff and bran from head to toe after a day's work, took only cold showers even in windy cold winter nights. But this allowed Wang to save three Japanese sen a day (long out of circulation, a sen was worth one-hundredth of a yen), and as he once revealed in a speech at the Wharton School of Business, those three sen would buy him three pecks of rice.
When he was 38 Wang founded the Formosa Plastics Corporation starting with a daily output of four tons of PVC powder, which was delivered to customers by ox cart. Half a century later Wang's plastics business had grown into the world's third largest petrochemical conglomerate with an annual turnover of NT$2 trillion and almost NT$3 trillion in assets, easily surpassing established industry giants in Europe and North America. The two largest U.S. chemical makers, Dow Chemical and DuPont, view Formosa Plastics as a fierce rival and have even pulled out of petrochemicals altogether.
The Formosa Plastics factory in Kaohsiung City's Cianjhen District has preserved Wang's old office up to today. In front of it stands a large banyan tree that Wang used to illustrate his business philosophy. Pointing out that tree, Wang would often admonish employees that the Formosa Plastics spirit was to get to the root of the issue. He used to say that once a tree blossoms and bears fruit, people notice the lush foliage and lovely fruit, but ignore its most important part, the roots. Therefore, he argued, a business must be grown from its roots. The entrepreneur also used the banyan's intricate prop root system to explain how all problems are intertwined.
Wang would not allow this small house from the Japanese era to be remodeled or sold. Wedged between high-rise office buildings, it quietly witnesses our changing times.
During his long life Wang took control of his destiny, racing against time in the hope of completing a never-ending mission within a finite span of life.
In favorable circumstances Wang spared no effort to expand his business. When facing adversity he steered around the obstacles and moved forward again. And he would never cast blame elsewhere for his problems. During the martial law period, Taiwan's government did not want Wang to expand his business, and after the island became a democracy, he ran into resistance from the environmental protection movement. He was like a general denied the chance to battle.
In the 1980s he resolutely decided to invest in the United States. But since no one was willing to sell him a factory, Wang decided to build his own – not just any plant, but the largest ethylene factory in the entire country. Today, the huge pipes of the petrochemical complex in Point Comfort, Texas, whose output almost equals that of the Formosa Plastics Group's Sixth Naphtha Cracker Project in central Taiwan, sparkle golden under the Texan sun. The Group's three major petrochemical complexes in Texas, in Ningbo in China's Zhejiang Province, and in central Taiwan complement each other, mutually exchanging experiences, talent and goods.
Thriving on Adversity
It was not money that Wang fussed about most, but time.
Having interviewed Wang many times over the past three decades, I learned to read the habits of this influential business leader. Once Wang had settled into his seat at the outset of an interview, his secretary would bring him a cup of water. If he developed an interest in the interviewer's questions, he would ring the bell for his secretary and bark, "Coffee," a clear sign that he was ready to spend time on a longer conversation. If he didn't call for a cup of coffee, the interviewer had better excuse himself or herself as soon as possible. But even if he had begun drinking coffee, he could get impatient during an interview and suddenly get up and leave.
Whoever came to see him needed to be well prepared and take care not to waste even a second of his precious time. Usually grandiose entrepreneurs and politicians would become timid and cautious in front of Wang's office, like grade school students summoned by the principal.
Controlling one's destiny means being completely autonomous. Therefore, Formosa Plastics very rarely formed joint ventures with other companies. At most, the conglomerate bought technology, paying patent royalties while researching technological improvements on its own, thus bolstering its technological prowess.
Even though Forbes magazine estimated that Wang's personal fortune was worth US$2.8 billion, he firmly believed that the strong should help the weak and the rich should aid the poor. When it came to charity, he was also convinced that people should be helped to help themselves, and that those who obtain help must be able to control their own destiny.
In the late 1980s, for instance, helping child prostitutes escape their predicament became a social issue. At the time, indigenous or socially disadvantaged teenage girls were often tricked or forced into prostitution. Civic groups began to stage rallies and demonstrations to draw attention to the problem and founded support groups.
But Wang thought that prevention was better than trying to fix things after the fact. So he founded a five-year nursing course in 1995 for students from indigenous groups at the Chang Gung Institute of Nursing, which is funded by the Formosa Plastics Group. The students do not need to pay tuition, room or board and are even granted a living allowance.
After graduating from the institute, the students have gained special skills that improve their chances of earning a living without having to resort to prostitution. They even have the opportunity to become nurses at one of the Chang Geng Memorial Hospital branches. Wang also met personally with the students every year to help solve their problems.
God or Common Man?
People liked to call Wang "the God of Business Management." Attaining such celestial prestige seems to be a mission impossible for ordinary people. Yet a closer analysis shows that Wang combined various leadership traits in himself. Everyone can learn something from him.
He had foresight. In the 1980s he became the first Taiwanese entrepreneur to massively invest in the United States. An antique English map of the world hangs on the wall right opposite Wang's desk at his old office at the Formosa Plastics factory in Cianjhen, underscoring that even back then, his ambitions did not stop at Taiwan's shores.
He practiced what he preached. Wang liked to admonish his subordinates and family members to "work hard, be down-to-earth," principles that he personally implemented rigorously in all spheres of his life. When Wang drank coffee, he would dip his little cream container into his coffee to make sure he had used the last drop. He would stick soap leftovers onto new soap bars to use them up completely. And he would even consider a NT$120 necktie expensive.
He demanded discipline from his employees, but even more discipline from himself. For more than three decades he got up at 3:30 in the morning and did exercises. At the annual shareholder meetings he would show up ahead of all other Formosa Plastics executives to greet shareholders. In a five-minute address at a Formosa Plastics Group sports festival, he spoke for four minutes about the virtue Chinese people ought to cherish most – working hard without complaint.
Forty years ago, when even American management gurus had not yet invented the term "corporate culture," Wang was already busy establishing a distinct Formosa Plastics culture. Wang would personally train and lecture every newcomer to the company. Formosa Plastics Corp. chairman Lee Chih-tsuen still remembers that after joining the company, he had to work on Saturdays until 9 p.m. Then he would jump on a night bus to Taipei to attend training sessions on Sunday.
Wang was harsh on his managers, because he wanted them to be as tough as roaring tigers on their subordinates. He argued that only tigers could train tigers, and only a business led by tigers could be sustained for generations. If lambs take leading positions, they are not only unable to train tigers, but will also eventually turn tiger personalities into lambs.
Wang required his children to work hard without complaint like anyone else if they wanted to become members of the successor team. He regarded his offspring as subordinates, hiding his own paternal feelings, and demanding a lot from them from childhood on.
When Wang's eldest daughter Susan Wang, who now serves as deputy chief executive of the Formosa Plastics Group, headed Formosa Plastics Corp. USA twenty years ago, she kept driving her car to the office and working overtime even when she was pregnant. When doing an internship at a Formosa Plastics plant during her studies, Wang's second daughter Wang Jui-yu worked so hard that she even skipped breakfast and lunch.
But in addition to his demanding strictness, Wang also had a soft side. Amidst his stubborn persistence, Wang also showed flexibility.
Whenever the Formosa Plastics Group set up a factory in a new place, the company would first build employee accommodations. Wang believed that people needed to settle down to be able to work happily.
When the business group built its plant in Texas, it couldn't find a Chinese cook. Consequently, Wang transferred Chef Hsu, who worked at the Kaohsiung factory, to Texas for two years to cook Chinese meals for the Taiwanese workers there. Wang believed that only Chinese food could satisfy a Chinese person's stomach.
He also arranged a technology transfer, this time of culinary skills. Chef Hsu trained Mexican immigrants to cook Chinese cuisine. That's why up to today the cafeteria at the Texas plant offers various traditional Chinese dishes such as rice porridge, stir-fried eggs with vegetables, braised prawns with soy sauce, and steamed fish head.
A Lonely Giant Passes Away
After a life full of hardships and triumphs, Wang liked to say in his old age, "Nothing is easy in this world, but nothing is impossible."
For instance, when Wang came up with the idea to collect kitchen waste for composting, even his closest subordinates wondered behind his back whether he had gone crazy. Wang knew that he was up against many obstacles and that it would not be easy. But he worked to realize his idea step by step, first buying machinery, then researching technological improvements and negotiating with local government leaders.
Today, the Formosa Environmental Technology Corporation produces nearly 300 tons of organic fertilizer and grows more than 400 tons of organic vegetables per year. Meanwhile, kitchen waste is being recycled across the island and street corners no longer reek of rotten food.
During his long life Wang almost never took a vacation, working until the day before he died. Was it worth it? With eyebrows always knitted together and a thin, pinched mouth, Wang did not exactly look like a happy man.
"Of course he was happy," believes Wang's friend Wen-chang Ko, chairman of the WK Technology Fund. "Whatever idea he had, there were people who did their best to help him realize it. His life was full and magnificent. He did things the rest of us could never do."
Each era runs its own course. Now that the lonely giant has left this world, his era fades away. How much of his legacy the coming age will carry on, and how much it will discard, we can only quietly wait for time to tell.
Translated from the Chinese by Susanne Ganz
Robert Kuok Hock Nien's notes on the past sixty years
(On the occasion of Kuok Group's 60th Anniversary 10 April 2009)
(1) My brothers and I owe our upbringing completely to Mother. She was steeped in Ru-Jiao – the teachings of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and other Chinese sages. Ru-Jiao teaches the correct behaviour for a human being on his life on earth. Mother gently, and sometimes strongly, drummed into the minds of her three boys the values of honesty, of never cheating, lying, stealing or envying other people their material wealth or physical attributes.
(2) Father died on 25 December 1948 night without leaving a will. Following the Japanese surrender, he had re-registered the firm as a sole proprietorship. We went to court to get an appointment as managers, permitting us to continue to manage Tong Seng & Co. The judge said that, as there were two widows, the firm and the estate should be wound up.
(3) We decide to establish Kuok Brothers Limited. In mid-January 1949, five of us met at a small roundtable in our home in Johore Bahru. Present were my MOTHER, cousin number five HOCK CHIN, cousin number twelve HOCK SENG, my brother HOCK KHEE nicknamed Philip (a.k.a. cousin number seventeen), and myself (a.k.a. cousin number twenty). We sat down and Mother said, "Nien, would you like to start?" I said, "Fine, yes I will start." To cut the long story short, we got started, and commenced business from a little shop house in Johore Bharu on 1 April 1949.
(4) As a young man, I thought there was no substitute for hard work and thinking up good, honest business plans and, without respite, pushing them along. There will always be business on earth. Be humble; be straight; don't be crooked; don't take advantage of people. To be a successful businessman, I think you really need to brush all your senses every morning, just as you brush your teeth. I coined the phrase "honing your senses" in business: your vision, hearing, sense of smell, touch and taste. All these senses come in very useful.
(5) Mother was the captain of our ship. She saw and sensed everything, but being a wise person she didn't interfere. Yet she was the background influence, the glue that bound the Group together. She taught my cousins and my brothers and me never to be greedy, and that in making money one could practise high morality. She stressed that whenever the firm does well it should make donations to the charities operating in our societies. She always kept us focused on the big picture in business. For example: avoid businesses that bring harm, destruction or grief to people. This includes trades like gambling, drugs, arms sales, loan-sharking and prostitution.
(6) We started as little fish swimming in a bathtub. From there we went to a lake and now we are in the open seas. Today our businesses cover many industries and our operations are worldwide but this would not have been possible without the vision of the founding members, the dedicated contributions and loyalty of our colleagues and employees, and very importantly the strong moral principles espoused by my mother.
(7) When I hire staff I look for honest, hardworking, intelligent people. When I look candidates in the eye, they must appear very honest to me. I do not look for MBAs or exceptional students. You may hire a brilliant man, summa cum laude, first-class honours, but if his mind is not a fair one or if he has a warped attitude in life, does brilliance really matter?
(8) Among the first employees were Lau Teo Chin (Ee Wor), Kwok Chin Luang (Ee Luang), Othman Samad (Kadir) and an Indian accountant called Joachim who was a devout Roman Catholic and who travelled in every day from Singapore where he lived.
(9) I would like on this special occasion to pay tribute to them and in particular to those who were with us in the early days; many of whom are no longer here. I have already mentioned Lau Teo Chin (Ee Wor) and Kwok Chin Luang (Ee Luang) and Othman Samad (Kadir), there are others like Lean Chye Huat, who is not here today due to failing eyesight, and Yusuf Sharif who passed away in his home country India about one and a half years ago and the late Lee Siew Wah, and others who all gave solid and unstinting support and devotion to the Company. It saddens me that in those early difficult years these pioneers did not enjoy significant and substantial rewards but such is the order of things and a most unfortunate aspect of capitalism. However through our Group and employee Foundations, today we are able to help their descendants whenever there is a need to.
(10) I have learnt that the success of a company must depend on the unity of all its employees. We are all in the same boat rowing against the current and tide and every able person must pull the oars to move the boat forward. Also, we must relentlessly endeavour to maintain and practise the values of integrity and honesty, and eschew and reject greed and arrogance.
(11) A few words of caution to all businessmen and women. I recall the Chinese saying: shibai nai chenggong zhi mu (failure is the mother of success). But in the last thirty years of my business life, I have come to the conclusion that the reverse phrase is even truer of today's world: chenggong nai shibai zhi mu. Success often breeds failure, because it makes you arrogant, complacent and, therefore, lower your guard.
(12) The way forward for this world is through capitalism. Even China has come to realise it. But it's equally true that capitalism, if allowed to snowball along unchecked, can in many ways become destructive. Capitalism needs to be inspected under a magnifying glass once a day, a super-magnifying glass once a week, and put through the cleaning machine once a month.
In capitalism, man needs elements of ambition and greed to drive him. But where does ambition end and greed take over? That's why I say that capitalism, if left to its own devices, will snowball along, roll down the hill and cause a lot of damage. So a sound capitalist system requires very strongly led, enlightened, wise governments. That means politician-statesmen willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their people. I don't mean politicians who are there for fame, glory and to line their pockets.
(13) To my mind the two great challenges facing China are the restoration of education in morals and the establishment of a rule of law. You must begin from the root up, imbuing and infusing moral lessons and morality into youth, both at home and from kindergarten and primary school upward through university. Every Chinese needs to accept the principle of rule of law; then you have to train upright judges and lawyers to uphold the legal system.
(14) Wealth should be used for two main purposes. One: for the generation of greater wealth; in other words, you continue to invest, creating prosperity and jobs in the country. Two: part of your wealth should be applied to the betterment of mankind, either by acts of pure philanthropy or by investment in research and development along the frontiers of science, space, health care and so forth.
Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien (born 6 October 1923, in Johor Bahru, Johor), is an influential Malaysian Chinese businessman. According to Forbes his net worth is estimated to be around $10 billion on May 2008, making him the richest person in Southeast Asia. He is media shy and discreet; most of his businesses are privately held by him or his family. Apart from a multitude of enterprises in Malaysia, his companies have investments in many countries throughout Asia. His business interests range from sugarcane plantations (Perlis Plantations Bhd), sugar refinery, flour milling, animal feed, oil and mining to finance, hotels, properties, trading and freight and publishing.
The land of pointed star, the number of points delivered in League of Nations, partner with a crescent colored with their king's favorite and seven stripes in red and white added although there are thirteen heads will have their masters who bears the balance weights will loss their power in the year 2011 in the last term of their school. Their people was considered more supreme than the minors while many lowly still want to hold to their brand of prince of the earth in the east now oppose the new. 6/8/09 By Gerry Perry
