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."