A place that values me

By PM Wong
Jun 11, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 11 — We cannot choose where we are born but we can certainly choose where we live. My father was born in Guangdong province and migrated to Malaya with his family when he was six. I grew up in Kuala Lumpur, studied and worked in New York for many years before moving to Hong Kong 18 years ago.

Hong Kong is now my adopted home because I enjoy living here. More importantly, it is a place where I believe I can best contribute to creating a better world.

My family’s background was modest and only a stroke of good fortune allowed me to attend a top US university on a full scholarship. My first job, with a major Wall Street investment bank, provided me my first taste of capitalism at its purest.

Once hired, it does not matter what you race is, where you attended school, or who your Daddy is (okay, I am exaggerating here – it helps of course if you are a Kennedy or a Bush). Performance is what matters. Make money for the bank and you will be rewarded with promotions and big bonuses. One magazine once described being promoted to managing director on Wall Street as going to heaven without the inconvenience of dying.

My career took off through a combination of hard work and being at the right place at the right time. I worked in derivatives sales, the hottest area in Wall Street in the 1990s. Several years later, when the phone call came offering me a transfer to Hong Kong to head up my bank’s Asian sales team, I seized the opportunity. Two years after I moved to Hong Kong, I was headhunted by another bank to establish their derivatives sales team, as a managing director.

The thought of returning to work in Malaysia never once crossed my mind during those “go-go” years. The only larger Asian financial centre than Hong Kong was Tokyo while Kuala Lumpur, or even Singapore, was a backward city, as far as financial markets were concerned. The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 set South-east Asia back even more and Mahathir’s decision to impose exchange controls further isolated Malaysia from the rest of the world.

For a small market like Malaysia, the only interesting financial jobs were the top positions in Khazanah, Bank Negara or the Ministry of Finance but as a non-Bumiputera, there was simply no way I could be considered. This situation struck me as particularly ironic because I could theoretically become head of Temasek despite being a non-Singaporean but even as a Malaysian citizen I could never have the top job at Khazanah.

My work has taken me to pretty much every single country in Asia where I observed first hand the growth of their capital cities, not just of their new airports, roads and high rises, but also of their “softer” side like music, films, fashion and food as well as the attitudes and behavior of their people.

Someone once said that we can tell a lot about a country by the cleanliness of its public toilets. I think we can tell even more about a country by how it treats the weakest members of its communities. Using this criterion, 15 to 20 years ago, Malaysia might have been ahead of most of its neighbours but with rare exceptions, Malaysia has now fallen behind everyone.

The generosity of American philanthropists gave me the opportunity to obtain a first class education in the United States. After I retired from banking, I decided it was time for me to do my part to give back to society. I now volunteer my time to help local entrepreneurs build businesses with strong social and environmental missions in a financially sustainable fashion.

I firmly believe that the social enterprise sector would transform the world. If we can solve China’s social and environmental problems, then we are halfway towards solving the world’s problems.

With the rise of China in the global arena, Hong Kong remains the ideal place to observe the many social, political and economic changes taking place across the border. Many of these changes are gradual while others often take you by surprise but all of them impact the world in one form or another.

This city also perfectly captures the tension between the East and the West, between free-markets and centrally planned economies and between free will and control. How Hong Kong transforms itself in the years ahead will have a strong influence on China and, by extension, the rest of the world.

Sure I would love to work with Malaysian entrepreneurs in this sector as well but the poor corporate governance in Malaysia unfortunately makes it all but impossible for this sector to grow to any significance. So in choosing to remain in Hong Kong, I am simply choosing to live in a city that values my contribution and provides me the greatest freedom on how to focus my time and resources to make the world a better place for my children and all the other children of the world.