Post by zuolun on Jan 11, 2014 13:46:42 GMT 7
Tycoon’s slick move into O&G — 25 Oct 2013
Quek shifts cement and concrete units again — 25 Sep 2013
Malaysian billionaires’ paving the way for sons — 30 Aug 2013
Quek Jr. comes into his own — 8 May 2013
Quek Leng Chan offers to take Guoco Group private for US$1.1b — 12 Dec 2012
Guoco group sitting pretty on HK18.94b cash — 23 Nov 2009
Malaysian Chinese Business: Who Survived the Crisis? — Oct 2003
Malaysia's Corporate Survivor
Quek Leng Chan has bounced back from heavy debts and ill fortune to creditworthiness and political favour. Here's a look at the man behind the Hong Leong empire
By S. Jayasankaran
16 Aug 2001
QUEK LENG CHAN is a very lucky man, though admirers say much of that luck he made himself. In his country, business empires can rise or fall with political leaders, but Quek's has survived. In fact, the enigmatic tycoon appears to have emerged stronger than ever despite a close association with former Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim and a heavy pile of debt left over from the Asian Crisis. His personal net worth was estimated on August 1 at more than 3.3 billion ringgit ($868 million), putting him among the top tier of Overseas-Chinese tycoons. His 19 listed companies are engaged in businesses ranging from banking and air-conditioners to semiconductors and real estate.
Quek's political alignment with Anwar--ousted in 1998 for alleged moral misconduct--alone might have been the kiss of death for his family-run conglomerate, Hong Leong (Malaysia), which has total debts of 12.6 billion ringgit. Yet Hong Leong has not only managed to stay afloat, but sales of assets in Hong Kong and Malaysia this year are likely to raise over 15 billion ringgit--enough to wipe out the group's debt if necessary. With these sales to cement Hong Leong's creditworthiness, Quek can do no wrong now in the eyes of bankers. And according to senior financial executives, his cash hoard is also winning him renewed political favour with a government anxious for foreign exchange to be brought home.
How has he done it?
No answers are forthcoming from the man himself. He's something of a loner, ensconced in a penthouse in the towering Hong Leong Building in downtown Kuala Lumpur, avoiding high-profile social functions and seldom involving himself in Chinese community causes. In a letter to the REVIEW, he politely states that "it is not our policy to be interviewed by the media."
His reclusiveness compounds his legend. Stories abound of his wheeling and dealing and his Las Vegas gambling trips, along with his love of fine red wines and his huge collection of Southeast Asian art. But scrutiny of his investment history, deal-making record, and interviews with bankers, associates and ex-employees, reveal a combination of a shrewd understanding of capital markets, assiduously cultivated connections and a ruthless management style. "He's a Grade-A businessman," says Abdullah Ahmad, a columnist who's known Quek for years. "He uses his head rather than his heart and that's the secret of his success."
Hard-headed calculations may prompt Quek to bring some of his billions back home. After all, his Malaysian operations alone carry 4.7 billion ringgit of debt. But most analysts who track him say that, like tycoon Robert Kuok before him, Quek is likely to maintain his group's Malaysian presence while expanding abroad. Analysts speculate about a renewed focus on China.
But while Hong Leong expands overseas, "the future challenge will be internal," says a long-time associate, referring to disputes between second-and third-generation members of family-owned companies. The big question is whether the sprawling Quek clan can avoid the fate of companies like Malaysian motor giant Tan Chong, which is being fought over in court by the family that founded it, and Singapore beverage maker Yeo Hiap Seng, which the family eventually lost after squabbles over ownership.
Quek's uncle, the late Kwek Hong P'ng, founded the business in Singapore in 1941. Rivalry is said to simmer between the uncle's son, Kwek Leng Beng, and his nephew, Quek (the different spelling of his surname is ascribed to a midwife's error on his birth certificate). Kwek, 59, runs Hong Leong (Singapore) and his flagship company, City Developments, is the republic's largest listed property developer. Quek, 57, runs Hong Leong (Malaysia) independently, but his Singapore relatives hold 48% in his business through Hong Leong Co., the private company at the apex of the group. Quek and his immediate family own the remaining 52%.
The two cousins are both formidable characters, well able to rein in their relatives from encroaching on the other side's turf. After they pass from the scene, though, "the future is a grey area," says the associate. Apart from five brothers and their families, Quek and his wife, Yap Suan Leng, a former Indonesian-Chinese television presenter, have two sons and a daughter, two of whom are working in the group.
While Kwek built up his Singapore group from vast land banks that he inherited on the land-scarce island, Quek built his empire from scratch. How he did it is a clue to the secret of his ability to endure. After qualifying as a barrister in England, the 28-year-old was sent by his uncle to look after Hong Leong's small hardware-trading business in Malaysia in the early 1960s. After Malaysia's separation from Singapore in 1965, Quek was left to his own devices.
He began building alliances, both business and political. One business ally was tycoon Khoo Kay Peng. "Khoo and Quek did a lot of deals together," says a Malaysian-Chinese businessman who knows both men. Khoo was close to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who went on to become finance minister. Through Khoo, Quek got to know Razaleigh, and made another political ally in Syed Jaafar Albar, then secretary-general of the dominant United Malays National Organization. Through such connections he was allowed to buy licences for an insurance company and then a finance company. In 1975, Razaleigh and Ghazali Shafie, then home minister, supported Quek's application for Malaysian citizenship.
THE EARLY YEARS
In the early 1980s, Quek and Khoo fell out after buying 25% each in listed Central Sugars, a sugar refiner. According to analysts, Khoo wanted the company to himself and bought Robert Kuok's 7% stake. An embittered Quek sold out. "But that was his first big break," says the businessman, "because he made over 40 million ringgit by selling," which he reinvested in his growing empire. Quek has not spoken to Khoo since that time, associates say.
Khoo acquired a Malaysian bank in the early 1980s and Quek's overarching ambition, according to friends, was to own a bank as well. In 1981, he bought Dao Heng Bank in Hong Kong. But neither Razaleigh nor Daim Zainuddin, the next finance minister, allowed him to buy a Malaysian bank. Indeed, Daim is said to have disliked him. According to a Hong Leong insider, Quek allegedly snubbed Daim in a Tokyo hotel in the early 1980s when he was a relative nobody, and Daim never forgot the insult.
Quek's luck turned after Anwar Ibrahim became finance minister in 1991. In the early 1990s, the tycoon financed, advised and nurtured three business groups linked to Anwar. In return, Anwar in 1993 allowed him to buy MUI Bank, then owned by his erstwhile rival Khoo. Quek paid 1.1 billion ringgit for it, renamed it Hong Leong Bank and leveraged the price down through rights and share issues. After gaining permission from the central bank to open 27 branches, he listed Hong Leong Bank in 1994 for a valuation of over 6 billion ringgit. "I think it was sweet revenge for him" against Khoo, says the businessman.
Anwar's dismissal, however, brought immediate problems. The government investigated Anwar's links to Hong Leong. The point man for most of the group's Anwar-linked deals, Executive Director Seow Lun Hoe, resigned from all positions in July 1999 without any public announcement explaining his departure. Also that year, Daim, who had returned as finance-policy supremo, brokered a consolidation of Malaysia's banking industry that excluded Hong Leong from the original list of six anchor banks.
But Quek persevered, lobbying Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad intensively through senior Umno officials and prominent Chinese organizations for Hong Leong Bank to be made an anchor bank. He succeeded after Mahathir enlarged the list of anchor banks to 10 just before the November 1999 general election. Analysts noted later that the Hong Leong Group was a huge donor to the ruling National Front during the election campaign.
Quek was fortunate that the split among ethnic Malays, who were angered by Anwar's treatment, forced the government to accommodate the Chinese community, which wanted to preserve its share of the banking sector. But Mahathir was also well aware of Quek's strengths. Although Hong Leong Bank expanded its loan base aggressively in the 1990s, it kept dodgy corporate loans to a minimum, concentrating on safer retail clients. It never made a loss, nor did it need government help during the crisis. And at the time, Quek was the only Malaysian to have successfully gone into overseas banking in a big way, with Dao Heng in Hong Kong.
Besides political savvy, Quek has also demonstrated a sharp understanding of the markets, investing heavily at the start of Malaysia's boom. The diversity of his group has helped it to ride out subsequent downturns. Quek's Malaysian Pacific Industries, for example, is the biggest local exporter of semiconductors. When the 1998 recession in Malaysia coincided with the global boom in demand for electronics, the tycoon leveraged on MPI to cut debt held by other companies in the group, which kept bankers at bay. The electronics demand cycle lasted two years. Last year, the markets rose and Quek began selling assets with crisp timing and at premium prices.
Tapping the markets is Quek's particular forte, based partly on his unshakeable confidence in his group's potential. "He buys when his shares are low and places out blocks to fund managers when they are high," says a stockbroker in Kuala Lumpur. "They might get burnt but his timing is great." During the financial crisis, for example, his group bought large blocks of MPI shares at a low 3-5 ringgit. It then sold 5 million MPI shares, at 46 ringgit apiece, to institutional investors in February 2000, raising over 230 million ringgit. MPI shares now trade at around 14 ringgit.
In the last two years, Quek has consolidated and rescheduled debt. This year, he has been divesting spectacularly, negotiating the transactions with typical toughness. In April, he sold Dao Heng for HK$32 billion ($4.1 billion) to Singapore's DBS Bank. The figure staggered analysts who now call such steep prices "the Singapore premium."
In late May, Hume Industries, a Hong Leong company, was pressured into selling listed Nanyang Siang Pau, which owns two Chinese-language newspapers, to Malaysia's largest ethnic-Chinese political party. Nanyang's shares were trading at 3.50 ringgit, but Quek demanded 5.50 ringgit a share, reaping 239 million ringgit from the sale. Also, Nanyang announced a 103% dividend prior to the sale and Hume will collect another 44 million ringgit after regulatory approvals.
In his deal-making Quek often comes across as abrasive, never masking his obsession with expanding his group and sometimes alienating partners with his take-no-prisoners attitude. "He doesn't give free lunches to anyone and gets the best deal for himself," says Lee Siang Chin, a stockbroker turned private investor.
His management style is equally hard-nosed. He dominates his multinational group, managing "by fear" as one publication characterized it. One Merrill Lynch analyst recalls a glimpse of that fear when he was visiting Executive Director Seow in early 1997. As they sat chatting, the door to Seow's office burst open to reveal a tall, cigar-puffing man who crooked a finger at Seow. The worried-looking director scurried off in mid-chat. At board meetings even Quek's brothers refer to him as "Mr. Chairman." Current and former employees say he sets demanding growth targets and insists that managers be attentive to market trends. His performance reviews are legendary, dreaded by managers because of his exacting examinations of quarterly figures. Those who don't measure up are quickly demoted; those who do are rewarded with bonuses and stock options.
Quek's only form of relaxation, says a longtime friend, is gambling. In the casinos of Las Vegas, he is what's known as a Big Whale, the sort of high flyer who's accorded sumptuous suites and private jets. "Over the last 20 years, I estimate he's lost at least $100 million," says the friend, who has accompanied him on gambling trips. "When I asked why he did it, he said it was the only way he could relax."
Any thoughts of retirement? In 1989, when he was 45, Quek had surgery for a benign brain tumour which developed, according to an associate, following a fall from a horse. That was the only time, apparently, that he ever considered retiring. Certainly not now when he appears to be on a winning streak.
Quek shifts cement and concrete units again — 25 Sep 2013
Malaysian billionaires’ paving the way for sons — 30 Aug 2013
Quek Jr. comes into his own — 8 May 2013
Quek Leng Chan offers to take Guoco Group private for US$1.1b — 12 Dec 2012
Guoco group sitting pretty on HK18.94b cash — 23 Nov 2009
Malaysian Chinese Business: Who Survived the Crisis? — Oct 2003
Malaysia's Corporate Survivor
Quek Leng Chan has bounced back from heavy debts and ill fortune to creditworthiness and political favour. Here's a look at the man behind the Hong Leong empire
By S. Jayasankaran
16 Aug 2001
QUEK LENG CHAN is a very lucky man, though admirers say much of that luck he made himself. In his country, business empires can rise or fall with political leaders, but Quek's has survived. In fact, the enigmatic tycoon appears to have emerged stronger than ever despite a close association with former Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim and a heavy pile of debt left over from the Asian Crisis. His personal net worth was estimated on August 1 at more than 3.3 billion ringgit ($868 million), putting him among the top tier of Overseas-Chinese tycoons. His 19 listed companies are engaged in businesses ranging from banking and air-conditioners to semiconductors and real estate.
Quek's political alignment with Anwar--ousted in 1998 for alleged moral misconduct--alone might have been the kiss of death for his family-run conglomerate, Hong Leong (Malaysia), which has total debts of 12.6 billion ringgit. Yet Hong Leong has not only managed to stay afloat, but sales of assets in Hong Kong and Malaysia this year are likely to raise over 15 billion ringgit--enough to wipe out the group's debt if necessary. With these sales to cement Hong Leong's creditworthiness, Quek can do no wrong now in the eyes of bankers. And according to senior financial executives, his cash hoard is also winning him renewed political favour with a government anxious for foreign exchange to be brought home.
How has he done it?
No answers are forthcoming from the man himself. He's something of a loner, ensconced in a penthouse in the towering Hong Leong Building in downtown Kuala Lumpur, avoiding high-profile social functions and seldom involving himself in Chinese community causes. In a letter to the REVIEW, he politely states that "it is not our policy to be interviewed by the media."
His reclusiveness compounds his legend. Stories abound of his wheeling and dealing and his Las Vegas gambling trips, along with his love of fine red wines and his huge collection of Southeast Asian art. But scrutiny of his investment history, deal-making record, and interviews with bankers, associates and ex-employees, reveal a combination of a shrewd understanding of capital markets, assiduously cultivated connections and a ruthless management style. "He's a Grade-A businessman," says Abdullah Ahmad, a columnist who's known Quek for years. "He uses his head rather than his heart and that's the secret of his success."
Hard-headed calculations may prompt Quek to bring some of his billions back home. After all, his Malaysian operations alone carry 4.7 billion ringgit of debt. But most analysts who track him say that, like tycoon Robert Kuok before him, Quek is likely to maintain his group's Malaysian presence while expanding abroad. Analysts speculate about a renewed focus on China.
But while Hong Leong expands overseas, "the future challenge will be internal," says a long-time associate, referring to disputes between second-and third-generation members of family-owned companies. The big question is whether the sprawling Quek clan can avoid the fate of companies like Malaysian motor giant Tan Chong, which is being fought over in court by the family that founded it, and Singapore beverage maker Yeo Hiap Seng, which the family eventually lost after squabbles over ownership.
Quek's uncle, the late Kwek Hong P'ng, founded the business in Singapore in 1941. Rivalry is said to simmer between the uncle's son, Kwek Leng Beng, and his nephew, Quek (the different spelling of his surname is ascribed to a midwife's error on his birth certificate). Kwek, 59, runs Hong Leong (Singapore) and his flagship company, City Developments, is the republic's largest listed property developer. Quek, 57, runs Hong Leong (Malaysia) independently, but his Singapore relatives hold 48% in his business through Hong Leong Co., the private company at the apex of the group. Quek and his immediate family own the remaining 52%.
The two cousins are both formidable characters, well able to rein in their relatives from encroaching on the other side's turf. After they pass from the scene, though, "the future is a grey area," says the associate. Apart from five brothers and their families, Quek and his wife, Yap Suan Leng, a former Indonesian-Chinese television presenter, have two sons and a daughter, two of whom are working in the group.
While Kwek built up his Singapore group from vast land banks that he inherited on the land-scarce island, Quek built his empire from scratch. How he did it is a clue to the secret of his ability to endure. After qualifying as a barrister in England, the 28-year-old was sent by his uncle to look after Hong Leong's small hardware-trading business in Malaysia in the early 1960s. After Malaysia's separation from Singapore in 1965, Quek was left to his own devices.
He began building alliances, both business and political. One business ally was tycoon Khoo Kay Peng. "Khoo and Quek did a lot of deals together," says a Malaysian-Chinese businessman who knows both men. Khoo was close to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who went on to become finance minister. Through Khoo, Quek got to know Razaleigh, and made another political ally in Syed Jaafar Albar, then secretary-general of the dominant United Malays National Organization. Through such connections he was allowed to buy licences for an insurance company and then a finance company. In 1975, Razaleigh and Ghazali Shafie, then home minister, supported Quek's application for Malaysian citizenship.
THE EARLY YEARS
In the early 1980s, Quek and Khoo fell out after buying 25% each in listed Central Sugars, a sugar refiner. According to analysts, Khoo wanted the company to himself and bought Robert Kuok's 7% stake. An embittered Quek sold out. "But that was his first big break," says the businessman, "because he made over 40 million ringgit by selling," which he reinvested in his growing empire. Quek has not spoken to Khoo since that time, associates say.
Khoo acquired a Malaysian bank in the early 1980s and Quek's overarching ambition, according to friends, was to own a bank as well. In 1981, he bought Dao Heng Bank in Hong Kong. But neither Razaleigh nor Daim Zainuddin, the next finance minister, allowed him to buy a Malaysian bank. Indeed, Daim is said to have disliked him. According to a Hong Leong insider, Quek allegedly snubbed Daim in a Tokyo hotel in the early 1980s when he was a relative nobody, and Daim never forgot the insult.
Quek's luck turned after Anwar Ibrahim became finance minister in 1991. In the early 1990s, the tycoon financed, advised and nurtured three business groups linked to Anwar. In return, Anwar in 1993 allowed him to buy MUI Bank, then owned by his erstwhile rival Khoo. Quek paid 1.1 billion ringgit for it, renamed it Hong Leong Bank and leveraged the price down through rights and share issues. After gaining permission from the central bank to open 27 branches, he listed Hong Leong Bank in 1994 for a valuation of over 6 billion ringgit. "I think it was sweet revenge for him" against Khoo, says the businessman.
Anwar's dismissal, however, brought immediate problems. The government investigated Anwar's links to Hong Leong. The point man for most of the group's Anwar-linked deals, Executive Director Seow Lun Hoe, resigned from all positions in July 1999 without any public announcement explaining his departure. Also that year, Daim, who had returned as finance-policy supremo, brokered a consolidation of Malaysia's banking industry that excluded Hong Leong from the original list of six anchor banks.
But Quek persevered, lobbying Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad intensively through senior Umno officials and prominent Chinese organizations for Hong Leong Bank to be made an anchor bank. He succeeded after Mahathir enlarged the list of anchor banks to 10 just before the November 1999 general election. Analysts noted later that the Hong Leong Group was a huge donor to the ruling National Front during the election campaign.
Quek was fortunate that the split among ethnic Malays, who were angered by Anwar's treatment, forced the government to accommodate the Chinese community, which wanted to preserve its share of the banking sector. But Mahathir was also well aware of Quek's strengths. Although Hong Leong Bank expanded its loan base aggressively in the 1990s, it kept dodgy corporate loans to a minimum, concentrating on safer retail clients. It never made a loss, nor did it need government help during the crisis. And at the time, Quek was the only Malaysian to have successfully gone into overseas banking in a big way, with Dao Heng in Hong Kong.
Besides political savvy, Quek has also demonstrated a sharp understanding of the markets, investing heavily at the start of Malaysia's boom. The diversity of his group has helped it to ride out subsequent downturns. Quek's Malaysian Pacific Industries, for example, is the biggest local exporter of semiconductors. When the 1998 recession in Malaysia coincided with the global boom in demand for electronics, the tycoon leveraged on MPI to cut debt held by other companies in the group, which kept bankers at bay. The electronics demand cycle lasted two years. Last year, the markets rose and Quek began selling assets with crisp timing and at premium prices.
Tapping the markets is Quek's particular forte, based partly on his unshakeable confidence in his group's potential. "He buys when his shares are low and places out blocks to fund managers when they are high," says a stockbroker in Kuala Lumpur. "They might get burnt but his timing is great." During the financial crisis, for example, his group bought large blocks of MPI shares at a low 3-5 ringgit. It then sold 5 million MPI shares, at 46 ringgit apiece, to institutional investors in February 2000, raising over 230 million ringgit. MPI shares now trade at around 14 ringgit.
In the last two years, Quek has consolidated and rescheduled debt. This year, he has been divesting spectacularly, negotiating the transactions with typical toughness. In April, he sold Dao Heng for HK$32 billion ($4.1 billion) to Singapore's DBS Bank. The figure staggered analysts who now call such steep prices "the Singapore premium."
In late May, Hume Industries, a Hong Leong company, was pressured into selling listed Nanyang Siang Pau, which owns two Chinese-language newspapers, to Malaysia's largest ethnic-Chinese political party. Nanyang's shares were trading at 3.50 ringgit, but Quek demanded 5.50 ringgit a share, reaping 239 million ringgit from the sale. Also, Nanyang announced a 103% dividend prior to the sale and Hume will collect another 44 million ringgit after regulatory approvals.
In his deal-making Quek often comes across as abrasive, never masking his obsession with expanding his group and sometimes alienating partners with his take-no-prisoners attitude. "He doesn't give free lunches to anyone and gets the best deal for himself," says Lee Siang Chin, a stockbroker turned private investor.
His management style is equally hard-nosed. He dominates his multinational group, managing "by fear" as one publication characterized it. One Merrill Lynch analyst recalls a glimpse of that fear when he was visiting Executive Director Seow in early 1997. As they sat chatting, the door to Seow's office burst open to reveal a tall, cigar-puffing man who crooked a finger at Seow. The worried-looking director scurried off in mid-chat. At board meetings even Quek's brothers refer to him as "Mr. Chairman." Current and former employees say he sets demanding growth targets and insists that managers be attentive to market trends. His performance reviews are legendary, dreaded by managers because of his exacting examinations of quarterly figures. Those who don't measure up are quickly demoted; those who do are rewarded with bonuses and stock options.
Quek's only form of relaxation, says a longtime friend, is gambling. In the casinos of Las Vegas, he is what's known as a Big Whale, the sort of high flyer who's accorded sumptuous suites and private jets. "Over the last 20 years, I estimate he's lost at least $100 million," says the friend, who has accompanied him on gambling trips. "When I asked why he did it, he said it was the only way he could relax."
Any thoughts of retirement? In 1989, when he was 45, Quek had surgery for a benign brain tumour which developed, according to an associate, following a fall from a horse. That was the only time, apparently, that he ever considered retiring. Certainly not now when he appears to be on a winning streak.