The history of the fortunes of the world's 100 richest people - 03 "Sugar King" Robert Kuok

The ancestral home of Malaysian sugar tycoon Robert Kuok is Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China. His father, Guo Qinji, went abroad to make a living in 1909 and came to Malaysia. He first worked as a shop assistant and later opened his own cafe, where he made his home. Guo Qinjian's brother Guo Qinnuan was also in Nanyang. After several years of hard work, the two brothers jointly founded Dongsheng Co., Ltd., which mainly dealt in rice, soybeans and sugar, and their family became increasingly wealthy.

Guo Henian is the youngest son of Guo Qinjian. He was born in his home in Johor Bahru in 1924. Kuok Henian has two older brothers. Their childhoods were happy, with a well-off family, a strict father and a loving mother. The three brothers studied in an English school in Johor Bahru City. Kuok Henian has been extremely smart since he was a child, and he is very studious. After graduating from an English school, he was admitted to Raffles College in Singapore. During his studies, he worked hard, read widely, and his academic performance was always among the best in the class.

The Pacific War broke out in 1945, and the Japanese invaded Southeast Asia. Malaysia was also occupied by the Japanese army and martial law was imposed. Guo Qinjian's rice business was forced to stop. Misfortunes never come singly. Soon, nephew Guo Heqing, who managed the company with Guo Qinjian, was detained by the Japanese military police. The company had to close down, and Kuok Henian was forced to drop out of school.

After the end of World War II, Guo Qinjian reorganized Heshan and opened again. Dongsheng Co., Ltd. not only resumed business, but also, due to their careful management, the market continued to expand and develop rapidly. However, the good times did not last long. Guo Qinjian was already in poor health. Due to the overwork of many years of entrepreneurship, he finally fell ill and died in 1948.

Shortly before his father's death, Robert Kuok founded Li Ke Service Company in Singapore alone, which was engaged in the shipping industry. Due to his father's death, he had to return to Malaysia.

Kok Henian's mother is a smart woman with general knowledge and vision. She does not want the Kuok family's business to fall apart due to her husband's death. She suggested that Robert Kuok, his brother and cousins ??help each other and work together to start a new business.

Following their mother’s advice, the Kuok brothers pooled their inheritance and invited their cousins ??to come to the bank to discuss the matter. Each of them invested in the company and established the Kuok Brothers Co., Ltd. Although Kuok Henian was only 25 years old at the time, he was smart, capable, knowledgeable, and his brothers unanimously elected him as the chairman of the company. In this way, at a young age, he took up the heavy responsibility and inherited the business started by his father's generation, still dealing in rice, flour, beans and sugar.

At the same time, the business of Li Kewu Company founded by Kuok Henian in Singapore is also going on normally, and it is getting better and better, and it is becoming more and more prosperous. In 1955, Robert Kuok changed the company into Kuok (Singapore) Pte Ltd, which he also managed.

Kok Henian, who holds an important position, is well aware of his heavy responsibilities and his limited abilities. To further develop his career, he must broaden his horizons. To this end, he made a special trip to the UK to do market research and learn business knowledge.

In London, he paid attention to the working methods of business transactions and developed a strong interest in the excellent British business management methods. Through careful study and research, he discovered the potential charm of the sugar industry. Therefore, he concentrated his energy and conducted an in-depth investigation of the sugar industry's operations, and gained a clear understanding of the sugar industry's trading conditions. At that time, most of the sugar consumed by Malaysians was imported from abroad, and the domestic sugar industry was extremely backward. Robert Kuok was determined to seize this opportunity and do something drastic.

The European trip not only greatly enriched Robert Kuok's business knowledge, but more importantly, it gave him a sober reminder. After returning to China in 1955, in addition to running Kuok Brothers Co., Ltd. and Kuok (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., he founded Ming Yin Pte. Ltd. in Johor Bahru City to operate various commodities and import and export trade. Starting from the second half of the 1950s, Kuok Henian began to devote himself to sugar industry management.

He first founded the first sugar company and opened a sugar factory in Butterworth, near Penang Island. The raw materials for the sugar factory are mainly raw sugar purchased from Thailand, which is then processed and refined. The products are not only shipped to Malaysia and Singapore, but also sold to China through Wantong Co., Ltd. in Hong Kong.

In addition to processed sugar, he also purchased cane sugar from Cuba and resold it directly to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. The scale of production and operation is getting larger and larger, and he naturally makes huge profits from it. By 1962, people began to call him the "Sugar King" of Malaysia.

In 1968, Robert Kuok planned to establish a Perlis planting organization to further expand the Malaysian sugar industry. He was lucky enough to successfully lease 14,500 acres of land from the Federal Land Development Authority, which he reclaimed into sugar cane plantations. Near the plantation is the Perlis Integrated Sugar Refinery Sdn Bhd which he established jointly with the Federal Land Office. The company refines sugar cane produced on the plantation nearby.

In the first few years, the harvest in the plantations was not good, but after a few years, the situation was different. The output increased rapidly, and the output of the sugar factory also increased. Since 1973, Malaysia has basically achieved self-sufficiency in sugar.

In 1976, Robert Kuok acquired 93.3% of the shares of the Malaysian Sugar Factory. His total share capital reached 74 million Malaysian dollars, thus taking over the sugar factory. During this time, the sugar trade, which he had always attached great importance to, also achieved great success. According to newspaper reports, at that time, Kuok's conglomerate already controlled 1.5 million tons of the 16 million tons of sugar listed on the international market every year. Accounting for about 10% of the international sugar market. In the Malaysian sugar industry market, it accounts for 80%.

Since the 1960s, Robert Kuok has broken out of his single business scope and started the shipping industry. In the early 1970s, he developed the real estate industry. Today, Kuok Brothers Co., Ltd. has become a diversified enterprise group that not only operates sugar and rice, but also operates industry, plantation, shipping, mining, real estate, international trade, hotels, insurance, securities, construction, etc. There are 23 corporate headquarters of Kuok companies in Kuala Lumpur alone. Kuok Henian can be said to be "the richest person".

The grain industry is the basic business for the development of the Guo family. Since establishing the Federal Flour Mill in 1962, Robert Kuok later invested in building a flour mill in Klang, jointly operated 4 flour mills in Klang and Johor Bahru, and founded the Klang Gudang Cooking Oil Co., Ltd. as a sole proprietor. After expanding its operations in 1985, the capital of Federal Flour Mills Co., Ltd. increased to MYR 85 million.

In the late 1960s, when the tourism industry began to boom, Robert Kuok focused on the construction of luxury hotels and successively invested in and built Shangri-La hotels in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, Bangkok, Thailand, Fiji and Hong Kong. Among them, the Kowloon Waterfront Shangri-La Hotel with an investment of HK$163 million is the most famous. It has world-class ultra-luxury facilities and 742 guest rooms. Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts forms one of the largest hotel groups in the Asia-Pacific region.

The increasingly abundant capital provides a reliable foundation for Robert Kuok to operate the real estate industry. In 1972, he established Rainbow Co., Ltd., which specialized in real estate. He purchased a large area of ??land in Johor Bahru and built residential areas such as Rainbow Garden. Among them, Parkland Gardens has 11,000 houses and covers an area of ??903 acres. By 1984, the company actively began to expand its real estate operations and once again acquired a large amount of land, purchasing 1,025 acres of land on the outskirts of Johor Bahru.

The booming career did not make Kuok Henian intoxicated, and he set his sights on mineral development. Soon after, his Perlis plantation organization bought a 41.37% stake in the Raman tin mine and incorporated the mine into Kuok Brothers Co., Ltd.

As Robert Kuok has become increasingly prominent in domestic and foreign trade and industry, his businesses are no longer limited to places like Malaysia and Singapore. Since the 1970s and 1980s, he has been actively developing outward, and Hong Kong has become another center for his business operations. "Nanyang Siang Pau" once commented that Robert Kuok is an entrepreneur with "international reputation and wealth." The stocks of six companies under his name, including Perlis Cultivation Institution, Raman Tin Mine, Federal Flour Mills, Rainbow Limited, and Shangri-La Hotel Singapore, have been publicly traded on the stock exchanges of Singapore and Malaysia. Total assets are approximately MYR 1.4 billion. In 1984, the net profit was about 100 million yuan.

In 1985, the "Top Ten Entrepreneurs" selection event hosted by the Asian Institute of Management and the Malaysian Banks Association awarded the "Pyramid Award", which represents the highest honor in the business world, to Robert Kuok. In Malaysia, this award means extraordinary and amazing. In the eyes of the public, he is indeed an international entrepreneur who has achieved outstanding achievements.

If a successful entrepreneur cannot serve society well, then he is at best a businessman who can make money. Robert Kuok is not that kind of person. His spirit of selfless dedication regardless of fame or fortune is recognized by the people of this country.

Guo Henian is a person who does not seek fame. He speaks concisely and to the point, and is always down-to-earth in his work. He does not like to show off or be a star like some entrepreneurs. He is pragmatic and does not like to get involved in politics. Although he has deep personal relationships with many dignitaries in Malaysia and New Zealand, he has rarely been in politics except for serving as Malaysia's ambassador to the United States and chairman of the Malaysian Tourism Board.

In 1985, MCA Holdings Limited borrowed US$20 million from 20 banks in Singapore, which should be repaid in January 1987 according to the contract. However, due to poor management by the company's leaders, it was unable to repay when due. This means that MCA Holdings Limited will face the misfortune of being taken over by relevant parties. This company was established by the MCA in 1975 and is mainly engaged in plantation, finance, manufacturing, insurance, shipping and trade. MCA Cooperative holds more than 220 million shares of MCA Holdings, accounting for 30% of the paid-up capital. If MCA Holdings Berhad is taken over, the MCA cooperatives will be in danger of extinction. At the same time, this also directly affects the future of the MCA.

At a time when life and death were at stake, the leaders of the MCA Association, after many discussions, finally decided to carry out a comprehensive reorganization, and all 10 original directors resigned. Lin Liangshi, the general chairman of the MCA Association, personally invited the "Sugar King" Robert Kuok, the "Rubber King" Lee Watson, the famous lawyer Zeng Huaying and the director of the Perlis Plantation Organization Hu Benjin. The four of them formed a new board of directors. Robert Kuok served as the chairman, chair and leader of the board of directors. New MCA Holdings Berhad Board of Directors.

The actions of Robert Kuok and others to turn the tide regardless of personal gain have won widespread praise and support from all walks of life. "Nanyang Siang Pau" published a special article praising their righteous deeds. Robert Kuok has always maintained good relations with the leaders of the MCA. In 1985, Chen Qunchuan, the general chairman of the MCA and a member of the Malaysian Parliament, was detained pending trial by a Singaporean court on 15 charges including inciting others to break trust because he was inadvertently involved in an economic case related to Singapore. After learning the truth, Robert Kuok paid the huge bail amount to bail Chen Qunchuan out of prison. This move once again shocked the local society and attracted widespread attention.

In Malaysia, Robert Kuok is a figure that attracts national attention, both politically and economically. Both of the events he participated in were related to the MCA. This gives him a pivotal position in the country's vast Chinese society.

In November 1985, Kuok visited China with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as a member of the private entrepreneur trade delegation. Soon after, he invested and cooperated in the construction of the US$300 million China International Trade Center in Beijing. He will never forget that he is Chinese. As the reform in mainland China further deepens, Robert Kuok may make this place his main investment target.