January 14 2003

A Singapore entrepreneur who rose from a sampan shows how to set his own course, Eric Ellis reports

OW CHIO KIAT is a revelation - a substantial Singaporean entrepreneur who has managed to succeed without the patronage of his top-down, mollycoddling government.
He is worth about $500 million, is one of the island state's largest investors in Australia after Singapore Telecom's $14billion bite of Optus in 2001, and owns a waterfront mansion in Sydney's exclusive Vaucluse.
He likes his residences - at least four of them, in Sydney, London, Singapore and New Zealand - and offices to have gold-plated sinks and their own English pub.
His taste in cars run to a Ferrari 360 Spider and, at last count, four BMWs and three chauffeured Rolls-Royces with the OW1 registration.
Likened by an easily enraptured The Straits Times of Singapore to American Donald Trump, the 56-year-old Ow sometimes seems a poster boy for ostentatious excess.
But there are certain Singapore characteristics that even self-made men like C.K. Ow find hard to shake. Attention to corporate costs is one of them, as is being reclusive. And being a sensitive little flower seems to be another.
Asked by The Australian for an interview, a pro-forma request that accompanies any profile, Ow seemed to regard such a request as almost a provocation.
"As I spend half my time in Australia, I only know too well how often articles will be sensationalised," he wrote in an email. "In the name of being balanced, they like to bring in negative aspects of the subject. If you can undertake that you will avoid such a practice and that you will let me confirm quotes/context, I shall try my best to help you achieve your objectives."
When The Australian responded to the effect that if Ow does spend much time in Australia, he would realise that unlike Singapore's self-censoring media, its is not usual practice to have interview subjects dictate what will be written about them. He responded that he would be unable to add value, to which The Australian expressed disappointment. He seemed to take that as a provocation.
"I am not impressed by your threat. Even though I have no time for you, I am prepared to take you on."
And so went one of the few public utterances of C.K. Ow, who clearly has a more accommodating bedside manner when it comes to welcoming guests to his five-star Stamford chain, one of Australasia's largest.
If the Stamford name isn't so familiar, the Ritz-Carlton might be. That was the name of the two harbourside hotels in Sydney that Ow snapped up in 2000, paying $44 million for the Ritz-Carlton in Double Bay and $40 million for the property at Circular Quay. Then there was the Sheraton at Sydney Airport for $92 million and Brisbane's Heritage Hotel for $53 million.
Re-branded with Ow's Stamford name, the 10-strong chain in Australia and New Zealand is one of the region's largest. He has 3000 people on his payroll.
It is all a long way for Ow, The "Maestro of Good Living" as The Straits Times has dubbed him. In 1962, he inherited a small tongkang business when his father died. From these so-called bumboats, or sampans ferrying passengers across the Singapore River, he built the family Hai Sun Company in step with Singapore's modernisation, graduating to tugboats, lighters and then fully-fledged shipping and transport logistics.
In 1989, Hai Sun went public. But in 1995, he about-faced and moved from sea to land, notably in Australia, where he embarked on a $1 billion buying spree as property prices ticked up.
His obvious entrepreneurism seems most unSingaporean as the city-state debates if and how it should wean itself from the state drip of Singapore Inc, which owns as much as 60 per cent of the economy.
A businessman such as Ow, who has built an empire by being quick, would have a lot to offer as supposedly wise heads debate the future of his country.
Still, there are some Singaporean characteristics that are hard to shake. In 2000, he told The Straits Times that his role model was Singapore's philosopher-leader, Lee Kuan Yew, the very man who stewarded the evolution of Singapore's top-down economy.
Said the government-controlled newspaper, quoting Ow: "`I've yet to see another man so accomplished and so persuasive as him,' he says, his eyes gleaming with admiration."