While I was on the look out for some interesting job vacancy ( I'm dreaming of landing a CEO type status) one article changed my mind that I should be happy at where I am and what I am doing.
Sounds confusing......read on article from a UK newspaper written by Joe Studwell
A tale of money, massage and golf -Asia’s business godfathers
The interests of these moguls, whose dynasties often date from the 19th century, can cover anything from banking and property to shipping, gambling and timber.
In western management terms, godfathers are commonly perceived as chief executives. But in reality their activities are more like those of supercharged chairmen – setting strategy, making deals, hobnobbing, but ultimately leaving others to execute the substance as well as the detail of what they put in train.
Godfathers, and their immediate support staff, spend inordinate amounts of time making sure photographs of the tycoons with ascendant politicians are on display in their offices (and that images of out-of-favour politicians are taken down). Godfathers’ homes, yachts and hotels are placed at the disposal of people who need to be ingratiated; the problems of politicians’ wayward children are quietly attended to; and generous gifts are discreetly sent around the world.
Golf is the base ingredient of this social-business mix. Almost without exception, godfathers play the game. In Hong Kong, for instance, the top tycoons – Li Ka-shing, Robert Kuok, the Kwok brothers (Walter, Raymond and Thomas), Lee Shau-kee, Cheng Yu-tung – are all long-time players and several of them own courses (over the border in mainland China) where they can play host to their guests in private.
Asian dictators, too, have been big golf aficionados. Indonesia’s President Suharto played weekly, while Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines claimed to have the lowest handicap of any world leader (though his bodyguards were accused of kicking his mis-hit shots out of the rough).
Golf, more than any other activity, is the social lubricant of Asian big business. As a result, it is part of work. As is attending weddings and funerals of business associates and politicians – what Hong Kongers dub “doing red and white”: red being the colour of Chinese weddings, white that of funerals. As is conducting business while eating and throwing endless parties and receptions.
The average godfather day is consequently long but social. On a typical day for Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest tycoon, he will be up before 6am and off down the hill from his home on Deep Water Bay Road to the nine-hole course in time for a tee-off before 7am.
He might play with one or more of the other billionaires who have homes close to the Hong Kong Golf Club, with one of his senior executives, or with a new business contact he wants to size up. Li arrives at the office at 10am. This is at the top of the 70-storey Cheung Kong Centre and has a swimming pool with a retracting roof.
Li’s first job is to check the press for anything that relates to himself or his companies. He speaks English, but prefers to read Chinese, so relevant parts of the English-language papers are translated before his arrival. Li also pays close attention to what brokerage reports say about his firms. Those who provoke his ire can expect a call from one of Li’s lieutenants or a letter from his lawyers. Li has frequently withheld advertising from newspapers that upset him.
When papers and correspondence have been dealt with, Li might pick up the phone and speak with one or more senior managers. At 11.30am, Li is ready for a massage. Thereafter, there is time for further administrative tasks before a 1pm lunch, inevitably of the working variety. After lunch, Li puts in another couple of hours before heading home at 4pm. At 5pm he will more than likely take another massage and then, perhaps, a game of cards with business associates at 6.30pm. Finally, there will be a business dinner before he retires at 10pm.
Since everything counts as work, Li and other godfathers can claim to put in 16-hour days. But the task of actually running their businesses, and putting the deals agreed over golf into practice, falls to their managers. There are many of these, but in most tycoon businesses there is a clearly identifiable person who might be called “the chief slave”.
In Li’s case it is Canning Fok, the somewhat overweight executive with a greying, pudding-bowl haircut who can occasionally be seen in public handing Li a mobile phone with both hands – the ingratiating Asian gesture normally reserved for name cards.
Fok undertakes tasks great and small. On the one hand he has overseen the investment of more than $20 billion (£10 billion) in Li’s third-generation mobile telephony business. On the other, it can fall to him to bawl out investment analysts who have put a sell call on a Li company.
Paul Mackenzie, a long-time analyst at the CLSA brokerage firm who has had the Fok treatment, marvels that Fok can find the time. “You would think Canning Fok had better things to do,” he said.
The job of the chief slave is to follow the boss’s whim and act as his enforcer. Fok is prone to bullying. One source recalls listening to Fok talk about a business deal over lunch, before Li’s man said: “They are going to play ball on this and, if they don’t, we will crush them.” It really was, the source said, “like a scene from The Godfather”.
The chief slave is the one who puts in the hard hours. They are well-remunerated – Fok may be the best-paid executive outside America, earning about $15m a year – but they do nothing but serve and obey their master, every day. Fok is rarely in bed before 2am and back in the office hours before Li.
The chief slave of Lee Shau-kee, Li’s closest rival in wealth in Hong Kong, is Henderson Land vice-chairman Colin Lam. Lam owns, by Hong Kong standards, an enormous house in the territory’s Repulse Bay. But he almost never gets to live there because he spends most nights in a flat he owns on May Road on the other side of Hong Kong island. The reason he does this is to be closer to his boss, who might summon him at any moment. Indeed, serious physical impairment through overwork is a common hazard of the chief-slave position.
Malaysian tycoon Ananda Krishnan’s über-lackey, ethnic Indian Ralph Marshall, soldiers on despite major heart surgery in recent years. An investment banker who knows Krishnan describes his treatment of Marshall as that of “serial bully”. As a typical example, the source recalls Krishnan in Europe deciding to telephone Marshall over the most trivial matter. On being reminded that it was 3am in Kuala Lumpur, Krishnan responded that this was unimportant and made the call to the sleeping aide. When Marshall himself tells the author, “I’m just an office boy”, he is only half joking.
Robert Kuok’s chief slave Richard Liu, who was on occasion reduced to tears by the stress of his work, dropped dead at Kuala Lumpur International airport on Chinese New Year’s day 2002. Liu’s death forced Kuok back into day-to-day management.
Those closely acquainted with chief-slave characters say it is not just their salaries, but power and proximity to the godfather that motivates them. The frisson of power is that much greater than in an impersonal multinational business, particularly since the tycoons’ position is bound up with their political access and favour. Ultimately, however, the chief slave’s status is a mirage. He may receive share options, but control of the business will never pass to him; rather it will go to the next generation of the tycoon’s family.
The chief slave is, almost by definition, Asian. He is from the same ethnic group as the tycoon, able to speak the same languages and interact fully with the family.
Another stock character in the modern godfather management cadre stands in stark contrast. This is the ethnic outsider, often a European or an American. There is a certain historical symmetry in the retention of such people. In the colonial era, western banks and trading houses depended on “compradors” to act as intermediaries when doing business with the local population.
It was an enormously profitable position, pregnant with possibilities for bribes as well as legitimate commissions. Casino magnate Stanley Ho’s great uncle, Sir Robert Ho Tung, was the greatest comprador of them all (for Jardine Matheson) and the first Chinese allowed to live on Hong Kong’s Peak.
The contemporary godfather is nothing like so dependent on outsiders – he is far more cosmopolitan, often having studied abroad – yet the outsider is still an important component of big business success. He may be required for some specialist, technical ability or to overcome the political problems that go with family business.
In the late 19th century, tycoons like Indonesia’s Oei Tiong Ham were already employing European engineers to help them run imported machinery. But after independence, the godfathers’ needs became more complex. Suddenly they were the ones in league with political power, holding exclusive licences and in a position to buy out or muscle out old colonial commercial interests.
As their power grew, they needed to know about global markets and global capital. In this context the stage was set for the rise of what might be called the “gweilo” running dog (gweilo, from the Cantonese meaning “ghost man”, is a common euphemism in the region for a foreigner; running dog comes from the Mandarin Chinese zou gou, meaning a servile follower). Some of the godfathers’ running dogs brought nothing more than management ability; others were, and are, less wholesome characters ready to engage in all manner of unseemly activities.
Rodney Ward, the seasoned head of the Swiss investment bank UBS in Asia, suggests that with respect to unprincipled business in the postindependence era: “The gweilos led the way not only in terms of degree of avarice but also in denying it had anything to do with them.”
As the imperial order crumbled, it was only natural that southeast Asia’s ascendant godfathers would find foreign talent at their disposal. The only limit to the advantage that could be gained from hiring from a multi-ethnic talent pool was a tycoon’s capacity to trust outsiders. In most cases this proved a constraint. Family-based businesses were naturally suspicious of outsiders, and particularly gweilos.
After all, the average tycoon had a lot of secrets that needed keeping. But one godfather, more than all others, realised that a well-paid gweilo was just as trustworthy as an Asian. That tycoon was Li Ka-shing, who became the ultimate employer of the gweilo running dog. As Simon Murray, who ran Hutchison for Li for a decade, observes: “KS is totally nonracist. He looks at people and sees the value.”
Compared with multinational companies, the godfathers’ management systems are few and arcane. What matters is the will of the Big Boss. At the heart of every tycoon business is a battery of secretaries, a chief slave and a phalanx of nervous executives awaiting the next instruction of one unpredictable individual.
PROMINENT GODFATHERS
Li Ka-shing (Hong Kong) Born in 1928, Li was catapulted into the top rank of tycoons when he bought the former British trading house Hutchison Whampoa from Hongkong Bank. Li built on Hutchison’s dominant positions in the local port-handling and retail cartels, and acquired Hongkong Electric. He made a $15 billion profit when he sold his Orange mobile-phone business to Germany’s Mannesmann.
Lee Shau-kee (Hong Kong) Lee was born in 1928 in China’s Guangdong province, the son of a wealthy banker and gold trader. He was one of the founders of the Sun Hung Kai property empire. In 1976, he broke out on his own, establishing Henderson Land, of which he now holds 68%. He controls other real-estate companies, as well as Hong Kong’s main gas supplier and Miramar hotels.
Stanley Ho (Hong Kong) Casino magnate Stanley Ho is a great nephew of Hong Kong’s original Eurasian godfather, Sir Robert Ho Tung. Stanley made his first fortune during the second world war smuggling goods across the Chinese border from neutral Macau. In 1962 his consortium won the Macau gaming monopoly. Ho modernised and expanded the casino business and built a group encompassing hotels and sea and air transport. He has had four wives and fathered at least 17 children.
Thaksin Shinawatra (Thailand) A former policeman, Thaksin made a fortune out of mobile-phone, broadcasting and other telecommunications services. He went into national politics and was swept to power on a populist agenda in 2001. Ousted last year by a military coup, he now faces corruption charges. He announced last Friday he had bought Manchester City football club.
Robert Kuok Hock Nian (Malaysia) Kuok was born in 1923 in Johore and built up his business through commodity trading and import substitution deals. In the 1970s he became known as the “sugar king” but diversified into other commodities such as flour and palm oil, as well as shipping, property and financial services.
The Lims (Malaysia) Lim Goh Tong made money trading war-surplus equipment after the second world war. After independence in 1957, he obtained the only casino licence in Malaysia and built the vast Genting Highlands resort outside Kuala Lumpur. Other Lim interests include plantations, property and electricity generation. His son, Lim Kok Thay, now runs the family business and has used his gambling profits to expand into cruise lines.
Mohammad “Bob” Hasan (Indonesia) Hasan was the closest confidant of President Suharto and amassed huge logging concessions. When Indonesia banned the export of raw logs in 1981, Hasan diversified into shipping, property, banking and held many companies in tandem with Suharto family members.
The Tans (Philippines) Lucio Tan, a Chinese immigrant, was catapulted into the big time by President Ferdinand Marcos. He came to dominate the tobacco industry, was handed control of a major bank and was allowed to open Asia Brewery to compete with the San Miguel beer monopoly. Several younger brothers work with him. In 2000, he became the biggest shareholder in Philippine National Bank (PNB).
The Zobel de Ayalas (Philippines) This dynasty – the oldest in the Philippines – derived from the union of the Zobels and the Ayalas in the 19th century. Since the second world war, the Zobel de Ayalas have transformed their Makati hacienda into the financial district of Manila, and diversified into banking, hotels, telecommunications and manufacturing.
