Strictly Business

The following sections are included:

• Foreword by Kwek Leng Beng
• Foreword by Philip Ng
• Timeline
• Contents
• Introduction

When Kwek Hong Png finally sank $7,000 of his life savings into setting up his own company trading in building materials, the boss he was working for was furious. It did not matter that the boss was also his brother-in-law. By setting up a rival firm in the same business, Kwek had crossed a line. The boss was determined to destroy the young upstart. He swore: “I will kill you in the business and make sure you go bankrupt.” Kwek was unbowed. After 13 years of service in his brother-in-law’s company, the 29-year-old was determined to strike out on his own. “I don’t want to disturb you,” he replied. “But if you want to fight with me, I’m not scared and I will take you on”…

One day in 1968, Kwek Leng Beng had enough. Nothing the 27-year-old man did was good enough for his boss and father. He was too slow, he lacked business nous and he was too conservative. Heck, even the way he crossed cheques irritated his old man. “It was very stressful for me as a young man,” he shared. “The pressure from him was too much.” He decided to run away. On a whim, and without much thought, he escaped to Penang in Malaysia in a rare act of rebellion. He did not know how long he wanted to stay away or what he was going to do next. All he wanted was a reprieve from the incessant shelling, or in his own words — “pom, pom, pom, pom, pom”…

Soon after joining Hong Leong Finance as a branch manager in 1971, James Sim was offered a ride by his young boss Kwek Leng Beng. It was a rare chance to enjoy the breeze in a gleaming grey Jaguar convertible, at a time when such luxury automobiles remained as infrequently sighted in Singapore as the big cat whom the brand was named after. Sim hopped in at their corporate headquarters in Robinson Road, the central business district of Singapore, and Kwek drove east…

When racial riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in 1969 and spilled over to neighbouring Singapore, it was the final blow to beleaguered small property developer City Developments Limited. Seven days of clashes between Malay mobs and Chinese triads in Singapore left some 80 injured and four dead. Investors’ confidence, already at a low after the 1967 announcement by the British of their military withdrawal east of Suez, sank even lower. City Developments, or CDL as it is popularly known, was frantically trying to channel funds from its moribund Malaysian projects in southern Johor Bahru to Singapore, but its liquidity was extremely tight. It was desperate…

When the jet age finally reached Asia in the early 1960s, it was obvious to the young Singapore government that the British colony was unprepared to tap on the good value to be made from global tourism. Jetliners were moving people across borders at a rate unseen in human history, with a record 58 million travellers in 1963, but Singapore had done next to nothing to promote international tourism. Something had to change…

When the news came in August 1990, Kwek Leng Beng was braced for impact. After a lengthy trial involving Queen’s Counsels and a billionaire in the dock, the verdict was a painful one to accept. His father, Kwek Hong Png, and a cousin were each fined S$5,000 after pleading guilty to a breach of the Companies Act. They had been accused of not using due diligence in discharging their duties as directors of Tripartite Developers, a real estate company largely owned by Hong Leong Holdings. Both had improperly authorised Tripartite to pay a real estate broking firm, and were fined…

When Kwek Leng Beng took over from his father in the early 1990s, the business and the world stood at the crossroads of revolution, reform and reorganisation. The Cold War was hobbling to an end after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the repercussions to this purported end of history swept the world from west to east. There was a bloody crackdown in Beijing which came to be known as the Tiananmen Incident of 1989. Closer to home in South-east Asia, Vietnam pulled out of Cambodia after 11 years of a bloody occupation. After decades of turbulence, the region which Kwek called home would finally find some peace…

New York, New York. Everything about New York agreed with Kwek Leng Beng. He loved cities, eschewed the countryside. And no city comes bigger, brighter and bolder than the Big Apple, Gotham City, the Capital of the World. He thrived on speed, demanding results at a digital pace even though he belonged very much in the analogue age. The relentless pace of Wall Street, of Broadway, of Times Square synced with the inner rhythm of a man whose favourite answer when asked about a deadline was “yesterday.” He obsessed about locations and there is no more prestigious zip code in the world than Manhattan. After all, few places could be identified globally by its phone number area code, unlike bygone days when 212 denoted a cool connection at the heart of it all…

The Plaza Hotel demands attention and gets it. In a city of global icons, from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, such persistent tenancy of the limelight is worthy of a boast, especially as it has stretched beyond a century, from the 1890s to 2020s. The Plaza, as most New Yorkers called it, knows the world could not afford to ignore its rusticated Vermont marble and cream-coloured terra-cotta brick façade. Perhaps it is because of its fantastic address — preening from a junction of Manhattan which faces Central Park to the north and Fifth Avenue to the west. It carries the ideal blend of sustainability and shopping with the famous urban open space juxtaposing with possibly the world’s most luxurious shopping street. The Plaza’s zip code is the perfect geography of glamour meets green…

Long before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator of his eponymous tower in New York in 2015 to launch an audacious and improbable bid for the United States presidency, he had a far deeper desire that was more posh than political. Since he was seven years old, he had been fascinated by the Plaza Hotel, nursing a desire that would at once lead him to one of his biggest successes, yet also signpost a humiliating defeat. “I just remember the feeling of opulence,” he said of his first visit to the hotel. “There’s something very haunting and magical about the Plaza”…

When teenager Anne Klein boarded a flight at Shannon Airport in Ireland, little did she know she would be on a bizarre journey which would eventually end with the Irish national carrier selling one of its biggest assets. The trip had started fairly innocuously in 1995. The 18-year-old checked in for a short flight to Manchester in neighbouring England, but the ground staff of Aer Lingus directed her to a flight to Minsk in Belarus instead. When the cabin crew of the Minsk-bound aircraft discovered they had one too many passengers, they alerted the captain but he chose to continue the flight…

Ask Kwek Leng Beng about any financial crises, economic recessions and global meltdowns, and his reactions are almost always a dull stare into space at a seemingly boring question, followed by a gentle shrug. “We are conservative, we don’t borrow a lot,” he said. “I would tell my staff, have no fear. It doesn’t bother me.” For a man who has adroitly followed his father’s contrarian business acumen of seizing opportunities in crises, a bearish market is when he transforms into a bull. Through oil crises, recessions, race riots and even the sudden independence of his country, nothing had fazed Kwek and Hong Leong…

When Asia sneezes, Kwek Leng Beng seizes. While the region was bedridden by the Asian economic flu in 1998, the Singaporean consolidated his defences and made sure the financial health of his companies would hold steady. Once his backline was secured, he went on the offensive as the decade turned into its last year. The world may have been slowed by the Millennium Bug, but Kwek would hasten to add booster shots that would take him into the 2000s with fresh landmarks, milestone victories and global accolades. As he approached his 60^th birthday, he was morphing into a millennium mogul at the top of his game…

The moment the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11 in 2001, Kwek Leng Beng knew the world he had lived in in the past 60 years would change forever. Travel would never be the same again, hospitality would be shaken at its roots and thick red lines would be drawn between civilisations. Business and development, especially his, would have to adapt to a brand new normal. What he did not bargain for was the possibility for tragedy to hit a lot closer to his home and heart…

The new millennium had not been kind to Kwek Leng Beng. The dot.com crash in 2000 was exacerbated by the September 11 attacks the next year, dealing two severe blows to the global economy, particularly in the United States. His hotel empire was reeling. To make it worse, the real estate market in Asia remained in absolute doldrums, struggling to exit a long winter which began with the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. When City Developments (CDL) announced its results for financial year ending 2001, it was an ugly sight. Its net profit had plunged 85.5 per cent to S$41.6 million…

When Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in August 2004 that his government would consider breaking decades-old taboo to build a casino, reactions from the society were a volatile cocktail of excitement, concern and outright fear. But there were no such mixed feelings for Kwek Leng Beng. He knew immediately that it was the right decision to reinvent the country’s economy and image, a change which could fundamentally alter Singapore’s global reputation. While some demurred publicly on grounds of morals and mores, he openly plumped for it. “Singapore must move with the times. We should nurture a mindset change,” he told the local media in the weeks after the news. In good measure, he suggested where the landmark casino ought to be built — on the empty reclaimed Marina Bay which The Sail looked out to…

It felt like the circle of life that Kwek Leng Beng would have to return to Beach Road at some point. Nearly seven decades after his father had started Hong Leong as a general trading company with a shopfront by the southern shores of Singapore, Kwek would gaze down at a majestic empty plot of land from a neighbouring building on the same road. “You have to tender for it,” said real estate consultant and friend Edmund Tie, who was hosting Kwek in his office in Shaw Tower. Kwek knew he was right. While the location had long lost the relevance of its name because of Singapore’s rapid land reclamation, it was still a superb piece of real estate. To its north, on the other side of Beach Road, was the iconic Raffles Hotel. On the other flank, across Nicoll Highway, sat Suntec City, one of the country’s biggest shopping malls and convention centres. Property analysts went so far as to describe it as “the last iconic site in Singapore”…

While Kwek Leng Beng had expanded his family business into Asia, the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and even the Middle East, there remained a glaring omission in his global conquest — China. The challenge of breaking into the world’s biggest market would be given to his son Sherman. In 2010, the third-generation Kwek started CDL China with an aim to replicate City Developments Limited’s (CDL) Singapore real estate success in the world’s second largest economy. It was a big job, especially given the family business’ lack of success in the country. In many ways, China had long been somewhat of a thorny challenge for the Kweks…

In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Sincere saga, Kwek Leng Beng would find an unlikely break. Seemingly from out of nowhere, a Korean buyer approached City Developments (CDL) in August 2020 with an interest to buy the Millennium Hilton Seoul. “It was almost out of the blue, a cold call saying they want to purchase this hotel for over 700 billion won (US$490 million),” said Kwek Eik Sheng, nephew of Kwek Leng Beng and then the group chief strategy officer. The timing could not have been better. Kwek’s hotel empire had been savaged by the pandemic, Sincere was plunging deeper into the red and family members were demanding results. It was a chance for Kwek to charge back, or as the Koreans would cheer: “Hwaiting!” — Korean English for “fighting” or simply “come on”…

In the ornate ballroom of Caroline’s Mansion, the lush fittings conveyed luxury, importance and impeccable personal prestige. The exclusive venue adjacent to the main St. Regis Singapore evoked the charms of 19^th-century New York grandeur, from coffered ceilings to plaster crown mouldings, an exclusive space completely at odds with its bustling Orchard Road address. As a homage to the founding Astor family of St. Regis, which are among the earliest tycoons of the United States, it was fitting as the place where the Kweks would finally gather after some two years of pandemic-enforced restrictions…

The following sections are included:

• Acknowledgements
• Index